


Song of Myself, V

by morningsound15



Category: Pitch Perfect (Movies)
Genre: (nothing explicit), Accidental Kiss, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bechloe Week 2018, Drunk Texting, F/F, Friends to Lovers, Good Luck Charm, Implied/Referenced Conversion Therapy, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, Internalized Homophobia, Jealousy, Road Trip, Why?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-24
Updated: 2018-09-23
Packaged: 2019-06-15 09:22:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 23,260
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15409833
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/morningsound15/pseuds/morningsound15
Summary: Chloe is the first (and only) girl Beca has ever kissed.**For Bechloe Week 2018





	1. Accidental Kiss

**Author's Note:**

> **_Monday, July 23: Accidental Kiss_ **
> 
> My take on Bechloe Week 2018. The chapters move chronologically and can be read as a sequence of one-shots within the same universe.

____________________

_I believe in you my soul, the other I am must not abase itself to you,  
And you must not be abased to the other._

____________________

Chloe is the first (and only) girl Beca has ever kissed. Not that she hasn’t thought about kissing other girls before Chloe. She definitely has. There was Lila Nicholson in eighth grade, Abi Johnson at summer camp when she was 15, Adriana Nunes at that one party she went to the week before she graduated high school…

So, it’s not like Beca’s never thought about kissing girls. She has — rather often. But before Chloe, she never really had the opportunity.

____________________

Beca is in eighth grade, trying to work up the courage to ask Lila Nicholson if she likes her (or “ _like_ likes her,” as the terminology of the time dictates), when one day — with heart hammering in her chest — she puts her hand (carefully, cautiously, purposefully) down between them. They’re sitting next to each other on the bus, and Lila is laughing at something Richie Yarrow is doing a few seats away, and Beca, sensing her opportunity, drops her hand down on top of Lila’s where it lays (still and inviting) on the slightly-sticky vinyl cover of the small seat they share.

She’s just testing the waters, really. She’s heard her friends giggle and laugh when they talk about holding hands with boys; when they mention that boys’ hands are usually sweaty but still nice to hold; when they talk about how their stomachs flutter when their new boyfriends take their hand as they walk to class together. Beca hears what they say, and absorbs it ravenously.

Beca has never held hands with anyone. She’s small, and somehow both short and gangly at the same time (a combination that, she is constantly reminded, is _supremely_ unattractive). No one wants to date a midget. That’s what they say, at least.

The boys in her class tease her constantly about being too tiny for their grade. “How are you going to get around in high school?” they sneer at her. “You won’t be able to see over the desks!” Or, sometimes: “The seniors are gonna shove you into every locker they find, so you better watch out!”

Beca has been short all her life, and she’s faced relentless abuse because of it. For three full years she’s been the shortest girl in their class — the last picked for team sports, the last in line at picture day — and it isn’t fair, because it isn’t her _fault_ she’s so small, but none of that seems to matter. Here she is, 14-years-old, not yet 5 feet tall, in the middle of eighth grade, and when it feels like all of Beca’s friends are getting asked out and going on movie dates and sitting next to their boyfriends in the cafeteria, Beca has never dated _anyone._ She’s never been kissed. No one has ever had a crush on her. No one has ever held her hand.

The boys in her class are mean to her. Her mom says that that means that they like her, but Beca isn’t sure about all that, because she’s always figured that you aren’t supposed to want to be _mean_ to the people you like.

But Lila’s not mean. Lila is nice. Lila is her best friend. Lila smiles at her in the hallways and sits with her in the cafeteria. Lila invites her over for sleepovers and she even baked Beca brownies for her birthday a few months ago.

Lila is nice, and Beca likes her. (She isn’t sure if she _like_ likes her, but she _does_ know that whenever Lila smiles at her or whispers a joke to her in the middle of class or shares half of her fries with her, Beca feels an explosion of butterflies in her stomach.)

She’s pretty sure she wants to hold her hand. Or maybe she doesn’t, but holding hands is the only way she can think of to figure out if what she feels for Lila is the kind of swooning crush her friends have described, or whether it’s just a bad reaction to the greasy cafeteria pizza.

But the second Beca’s hand falls on top of Lila’s, the other girl pulls her arm away. She laughs and shakes her head, and Beca feels shame burn the tops of her cheeks, the tips of her ears. “Don’t do that, Beca,” she says with half of her attention still on Richie, and the way he’s clambering over the seats in the back of the bus. “People might think we’re _gay_.” She hisses the word like a curse, whispers it low under her breath so that no one but them can hear it (as if even uttering the word aloud might spark a damning and irredeemable rumor).

Beca’s stomach rolls over and she feels sick and queasy and like she might need to throw up. She blames it on the unsteady nature of the bus driver’s navigation (and the way he seems to hit every pothole they came across, almost like he’s purposefully aiming for them), but even through the thoughts of her panicked self-preservation, she knows she’s lying.

There’s nothing worse than doing something _gay_ when you’re in eighth grade. Beca’s only 14, but even _she_ knows that much. The consequences of having _that_ word attached to you…

She clenches her hands into fists at her sides and never touches Lila Nicholson again.

 

 

Abi Johnson is the first girl Beca actually falls for. They’re 15, and the 2 weeks at sleep-away camp they spend together feel like an eternity.

Abi and Beca meet on the first day of camp and are immediately inseparable. They share a cabin and a bunk (Beca on the bottom, Abi on the top), they sign up for all the same activities. They sit next to each other at every meal, at every evening activity, during every play and performance. They stay up way past lights-out whispering secrets to each other. Abi braids Beca’s hair every morning before they go swimming, and when they walk back from the mess hall at the end of the day, when the sun is setting and the evening feels endless, when the air starts getting cool and the fireflies start coming out and summer feels immaculate and untouchable, they hold hands. They get drunk one night on a bottle of cheap, terrible vodka Abi has managed to sneak past counselor bag-checks. The stars in the sky seem to spin and spin and spin, the Earth turning so fast Beca thinks for sure she’s going to be thrown off its surface, and Beca laughs until she can’t breathe.

Nothing ever comes of it, of course. Not really. They’re 15, and confused about what everything means. Beca’s never had a boyfriend, and Abi’s never had a best friend, so the things they feel seem simultaneously enormous and inconsequential. Besides that, they live many states and hundreds of miles apart, so the likelihood of seeing each other on the off-season between summers doesn’t seem likely. Their relationship feels at times both easy and immensely complex. So they don’t do much more than hold hands and occasionally share food. But when Abi whispers to Beca one night that she thinks she might be bi, Beca’s stomach swoops and her heart soars and she feels indestructible for the first time in her life.

They text for weeks when they get home, a constant string of back-and-forth messages that _just_ manage to toe the line between intense friendship and something deeper, something _more._

But then one day, without any warning, Abi stops returning Beca’s texts. She doesn’t pick up when Beca calls. She doesn’t post anymore on Facebook and it’s impossible for Beca to reach her by email. Beca does everything she can think of to contact her, but she doesn’t have Abi’s address and can’t figure out what it is, so she can’t even write her a letter to ask her what’s going on, to see if she’s okay. The sudden lack of communication stings like rejection, and Beca cries for a full week, hurt and inconsolable and heartbroken without fully knowing why.

An agonizing 4 months later and Beca returns to camp for what turns out to be her final summer. Abi never shows. There are whispers around camp, rumors that spread amongst the kids like wildfire through dry brush. They say Abi’s parents sent her to a different camp out west, one of those camps that takes ‘deviant’ kids and turns them into respectable, moral, upstanding citizens. They say Abi’s parents found out she was gay and totally flipped out. They say they took away her phone, her social media, stopped letting her see friends and communicate with the outside world. (One of the younger campers claims to know Abi from school, though they’re in different grades, and she proves to be the main source of the spread of gossip and information). They never get any formal confirmation, but something about the circumstances surrounding Abi’s disappearance feels disturbing, and ‘ _crazy religious parents have bigoted meltdown and banish their kid from their house’_ is a distinctly plausible reaction for a family living in rural Pennsylvania, so the camp runs with the story.

It’s all anyone can talk about for the full two-week session. The rest of the campers are totally outraged by the story, of course — they’re in that phase of their lives where taking a moral stand for a disenfranchised group is something admirable, even fashionable. They indignantly curse Abi’s parents for their bigotry and homophobia. A few of the older girls even try to start a letter-writing campaign, hoping that if they can get enough people to write to the Governor of Pennsylvania (Abi’s home state), they can save her from her fate.

But Beca isn’t outraged. She doesn’t take part in letter-writing campaigns, doesn’t gossip about Abi’s whereabouts with the other campers. She isn’t filled with indignant fury; she’s horrified. The guilt Beca feels is staggering, crippling. She has cement in her stomach for the entire two weeks. She barely talks, barely eats. Because there’s little doubt in her mind that _she’s_ the reason Abi was sent away, and trying to reconcile that knowledge with her adolescent feelings of inferiority is an impossible task for one so young.

She just keeps going back to the thought, over and over in her head, that… _God_ , they never even _kissed_.

 

 

Adriana Nunes sits behind Beca in English class. They’re friendly, but not close. They worked together on their final project for _Macbeth_ last year, and sometimes they’ll exchange amused and exasperated eye contact when Paul Duncan says something particularly stupid in class, but that’s about the extent of their relationship. They run in totally different circles. Adriana is on the varsity soccer team, and Beca spends most of her free time either at her job or mixing music in one of the empty practice rooms in the band hallway. So they don’t get much chance to interact.

But Beca has known who Adriana Nunes is since the seventh grade. She’s the kind of girl who attracts attention wherever she goes, the kind of girl who is impossible to ignore. Funny, smart, and popular, she seems to have everything going for her. She’s even got a scholarship to play soccer at Rice in the fall (she’s been committed since junior year), so she’s pretty much got her future all set which, for someone as naïvely motivated as Beca, is something to be envious of. She’s also openly queer, which, when Beca thinks about it, is exhilarating and terrifying and nerve-wracking and exciting and horrible all at once. (Beca’s heart races whenever she thinks about it. She’s never told anyone that she might be interested in girls in a romantic and/or sexual sense, but when she thinks about what it might be like to kiss Adriana she feels like she might pass out.)

Beca is equal parts jealous of Adriana’s easy confidence and totally into her lazy, grungy aesthetic. She doesn’t know quite how to reconcile the two.

A month before graduation, Adriana breaks up with her boyfriend. Beca tries not to think about it too much, worried that if she lets herself dwell on that information, obsess over it, lose her cool in front of the girl who seems to have the entire school wrapped around her little finger, she’ll never be able to survive the humiliation.

Beca takes this information, stores it in the back of her mind, and refuses to think about it again.

At least, until Michael Goldstein’s party the week before graduation.

Michael’s parents are out of town for the weekend, so he gets his college-aged brother to buy enough alcohol to get the entire county drunk and opens his doors to the whole student body.

The party itself is nuts. She sees Mitchell García push a mattress into the pool and then promptly fall asleep on top of it, Destiny Harris pierce Skylar Wells’ nose in an upstairs bathroom, J.D. Martin get so fucked up he decides to shave all his hair off, and Rose DeFranco accidentally set the living room rug on fire. And Beca’s only there for 90 minutes.

She arrives fashionably late, at just around 10:30, with two other friends in tow. (Well, technically Beca is the one in tow, since she didn’t drive and also didn’t particularly want to come in the first place, but still.) But Nathanial fucks off pretty early, on the hunt for a beer pong game he can tag into, and Katie (her ride) disappears soon after in search of her boyfriend.

So that leaves Beca, alone at a party she doesn’t want to be at, with the only 2 people she really knows having already ditched her for other people. With nothing else to do (and the prospects of unpleasant social interactions inevitably and dauntingly approaching) she grabs the first drink she sees and chugs it quickly, followed by another, and another (and maybe another). With 3-4 drinks in her system (she can’t quite recall how many she’s had), the party is suddenly much more inviting. The idiots getting shitfaced around her are no longer the moderately-annoying presences of kids she’s grown up with, of kids who used to tease her for her height and who like to throw food at each other in the cafeteria and get stoned under the bleachers at lunch, and instead now seem an almost welcome sight. She finds herself feeling nostalgic for this time in her life (even though she’s currently living it) and for these people she’s known for most of her adolescence (even though she doesn’t really like most of them). She thinks she might even miss some of these dickswabs when she finally leaves this Podunk town.

So it’s safe to say she’s hit a pretty awesome state of drunk at this point — loose, happy, carefree, a little sentimental. That’s about when she runs into Adriana.

She’s sitting on Michael’s counter with one leg tucked up underneath her. Her jeans are wide in the leg, and there’s rip over the right knee. She’s wearing a pair of chunky white Adidas sneakers, the kind that have laces but that you aren’t supposed to tie. She’s also wearing a yellow and red striped crop top. She looks like something out of a catalog from the 90s, but with a nose ring and a 21st century hairstyle. She’s got this effortless feel to her, like she’s been plucked straight out of a Hollywood movie, and Beca’s palms start to sweat and her throat goes dry when she sees her because _Jesus Christ_ this girl is hot.

Somehow Adriana must miss the way Beca is staring at her (a small miracle, if Beca’s being honest), because she strikes up an easy and casual conversation that Beca grabs onto like a lifeline. They actually end up talking for a really long time — well over an hour. Beca keeps sipping on beer and Adriana keeps laughing at her shitty jokes and somehow (Beca’s not sure how) they talk for longer than they ever have, exchanging information and stories like they’re old friends instead of casual acquaintances. And maybe it’s because high school is ending, maybe it’s because they’re graduating in a week and so nothing they do _really_ matters anymore, but Adriana starts flirting (nothing major, just a flip of the hair, a hand on an upper arm) and Beca starts flirting back. And Beca’s a little drunk, a little looser and freer than she would usually be, but not so drunk that she doesn’t know what’s happening.

An hour into their conversation, Adriana hops off the counter and slips her hand into Beca’s. With a charming smile and a slight nod of her head, she asks without speaking: _Wanna get out of here?_

Beca’s heart jumps as her stomach sinks, and she’s frozen in place. She’s never… no one’s ever asked…

Beca’s kissed plenty of guys at this point (she’s 18 for Christ’s sake), but she’s never had the opportunity to kiss another _girl_. Not _really_. Not for _real_. Not in a romantic or sexual situation that might actually _mean_ something. And this is _Adriana Nunes_ who’s propositioning her, the star athlete of the varsity soccer team who could probably have her pick of any of the people at this party. But she’s _here,_ talking to _Beca,_ holding _Beca’s_ hand and asking _her_ to slip off somewhere more private.

She must be dreaming. That’s the only explanation.

But no, she _isn’t_ dreaming. Adriana is standing in front of her, her hand loose in Beca’s, looking at her almost-hopefully.

Beca realizes she has two options: (1) Go with Adriana, follow her into some secluded room in the back of Michael Goldstein’s house and almost _definitely_ hook up with her; or (2) reject one of the hottest girls in school and in the process seal her fate as a young baby bi who’s about to enter college having never even properly kissed a girl.

Beca chooses option (3): stare back at the girl she’s been daydreaming about for months, wide-eyed and panicked, and mumble a quick, “I’m sorry, I can’t… I’m not ready,” and then sprint from the house.

Nathanial would kick her ass if he ever found out she turned down a chance to hook up with Adriana Nunes. Katie would roll her eyes and call her a pussy if she could see her right now.

So Beca never tells them about it.

____________________

Chloe is the first (and only) girl Beca’s ever kissed, and it’s not _fair_ because she doesn’t even get a say in it.

It’s not _fair_ , because Beca has been imagining what it must be like to kiss a girl for about _5 years_ now, and it’s not _fair_ that the first time it happens is because Chloe is drunk and can’t keep her balance.

It’s aca-initiation night (side note: whatever asshole made all these acapella-themed puns can _actually_ suck her dick) and Beca can already tell that whatever hope she might have once had of completing her parentally-required year of college by keeping to herself and flying under the radar is completely out of the question.

Jesse, that dorky kid from the radio store, has obviously already decided he’s into her. And he’s cute enough, she supposes, and he’s definitely charming in his own annoying way (she’s not super into the fact that thirty seconds into their conversation he states pretty matter-of-factly that they’re going to have _kids_ together someday — presumptuous much? — but she can excuse that faux-pas because of his obvious intoxication).

He stumbles off to find her a drink, and his spot is immediately taken by Chloe, who bounds over in her wedges and her tight jeans and her blazer, her eyes huge and glassy, looking like every girl-next-door character from every TV show Beca’s ever seen. She’s drunk, too, so that must mean she was pre-gaming this party because the Bellas all arrived together and there’s no _way_ Chloe’s managed to get _this_ trashed in the two minutes they’ve been at this party. She knows Chloe likes to drink and have fun, and Beca could tell within five seconds of meeting her that she’s one of those girls who doesn’t totally understand the idea of a _personal boundary_ , but Beca’s still not expecting her to be quite so… _hands-y._

Chloe greets her by grabbing her hands and yanking Beca to her. Beca stumbles but manages to laugh it off, even though she can hear her heartbeat pounding in her ears, even though she can feel the tidal wave of nervous embarrassment that she’s overcome with whenever a pretty girl gets too close to her swelling in her stomach.

“I’m _so_ glad that I met you,” Chloe slurs with her bright, glassy-eyed stare. She’s swaying a little where she stands, a back-and-forth motion that makes Beca nervous, worried that at any moment she might tip forwards or backwards and end up sprawled on the ground.

“I think,” Chloe continues in a whisper, leaning forward on unsteady legs so that her face is only a breath away from Beca’s, “that we’re gonna be really _fast_ friends.” There’s a strange inflection on the word _fast_ , something that might be emphasis or might be innuendo, Beca can’t tell, but she doesn’t have even a moment to think about it before Chloe sways forward even more. She falls forward, more than a little off-balance, her body flush with Beca’s. Her shoulders press against Beca’s chest, her hands pushing on Beca’s shoulders, like she’s trying to use Beca’s body to brace herself, to push herself off, and somehow, in the confusion, Chloe presses her mouth against Beca’s. It’s only for the briefest flash of a moment before it’s done, before she pulls back, before she says something about ‘jiggle juice’ and wanders off back to the party, leaving Beca shell-shocked and hyperventilating somewhere behind her.

Beca leaves the party at once because she can’t stomach the thought of staying any longer. She dashes off so fast she can imagine the dust cloud that would emanate from the soles of her feet if she were in a cartoon. But that thought, humorous though it is, is fleeting. Because all she can think is that she has to leave, she has to get away _right now_ , she has to get somewhere quiet and isolated because the party is loud and her heart is in her throat and her ears are ringing and she can’t _think_ and she can’t—

She stumbles back to her room with her face red and her eyes welling with tears. Her throat is tight, constricted, panicked. She feels like she can’t breathe. Her hands are shaking and her knees are barely holding her up. She feels like she wants to throw up.

Chloe kissed her. Chloe _kissed_ her. Chloe kissed _her._

She’s shaking and out of breath from the run (she hadn’t even realized she’d been running for so long). She can only thank God Kimmy Jin isn’t in the room — Beca doesn’t know _what_ she’d do if she had to face her unpleasant, semi-hostile roommate right now.

She has to calm down. She has to stop shaking. _Okay,_ she says to herself. _Okay, breathe. Calm down, breathe._

She just has to clear her head. She… she isn’t thinking clearly. There’s a good explanation for this, there… there _has_ to be. She just has to think. Think think _think_.

It was an accident. Chloe wasn’t trying to kiss her. She didn’t _mean_ it. That’s the only possible explanation. Chloe was drunk, and wobbly on her feet, and she was excited about the prospect of free alcohol and ample frat boys to hook up with, excited about the future of the Barden Bellas with their full new team of recruits (Beca, reluctantly, included within that list).

She fell. She leaned forward, dizzy and drunk and off-balance, and put her arms on Beca’s shoulders to steady herself. The kiss was barely even a kiss at all, just a little glancing brush of lips-against-lips. Okay, yeah, so Chloe’s eyes were closed at the time and she hummed as soon as Beca’s lips touched hers, but that… that didn’t _mean_ anything. Chloe was drunk. And she’s obviously a hands-y drunk. And if Beca thinks about it, Chloe’s _already_ a little too liberal with her physical affections for Beca’s taste, even when sober. She crashed her _shower_ the other day, for Christ’s sake.

(And besides, she pulled back right away and stumbled off on shaky legs without even glancing behind her, so it wasn’t like it was a _real_ kiss. No one just kisses someone out of the blue and then _walks away_ ten seconds later.)

Beca takes a few deep, steadying breaths as she finally starts to calm down. Her heart stops beating quite so frantically and her stomach stops churning quite so furiously. This was all just some crazy misunderstanding. It wasn’t serious, wasn’t something worth losing any sleep over.

It was an accident. It didn’t mean anything.

(Right?)

____________________

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Feel free to follow me on [ tumblr. ](https://morningsound15.tumblr.com/)


	2. Jealousy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Beca knows all about Aubrey’s ‘No Dating a Treble’ rule, and she thinks it’s ridiculous. She always has. But she thought, perhaps naïvely, that after this year of growth and change and _chilling the fuck out,_ that maybe everyone would stop taking this dumb and frankly _psychotic_ rule so seriously, too. She assumed that an ICCA win plus redemption for Aubrey plus a powerful and innovative set _plus_ Bumper leaving the Trebles would all result in a closer, more natural bond between the two leading acapella groups on campus. She thought kissing Jesse would be no big deal.
> 
> So then what the fuck is Chloe’s _problem?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **_Tuesday, July 24: Jealousy_ **
> 
> My take on Bechloe Week 2018.
> 
> Also sorry for the late posting I got a really late start on these…

____________________

 _Loafe with me on the grass… loose the stop from your throat,_  
Not words, not music or rhyme I want… not custom or lecture, not even the best,  
Only the lull I like, the hum of your valued voice.

____________________

Beca knows all about Aubrey’s ‘No Dating a Treble’ rule, and she thinks it’s ridiculous. She always has. For one thing, where the hell does Aubrey get off thinking she has the authority to dictate the personal lives of her acapella group? What, just because she’s the captain of the Bellas means she gets to hand-pick the people the rest of the Bellas date? What a load of horseshit. Who died and made _her_ God?

Also, while she’s at it, Beca takes offense to the implication that she can’t tell who’s a good guy and who isn’t. Like if a cute enough guy with a decent haircut just _sings_ a Bruno Mars song in her direction then she’s gonna lose her grip on reality, get so flooded with horniness because a dude can carry a _tune_ that she’s gonna immediately jump his bones, even if he’s a total ass? It’s infantilizing is what it is. She’s always known that she isn’t Aubrey’s _favorite_ person in the world, but even for her, that’s a _little_ extreme.

And look, Beca didn’t even _like_ Jesse that much at the beginning. But knowing that he rubbed Aubrey _completely_ the wrong way? Kind of a huge part of his appeal. And yes, she _does_ understand that she’s acting like a rebellious teenager who decides to date the bad boy with the motorcycle just because it freaks her parents out, but whatever. Aubrey isn’t her _mom._ She’s barely three years older than Beca, and she shouldn’t think that that gives her control over Beca’s personal life. If Beca wants to be friends with Jesse, she’s gonna be friends with him. And if she wants to date him (which she _doesn’t_ , not _really._ At least… she _didn’t_ ), then that’s her prerogative.

The point is, Beca’s an adult and she can pick her friends or boyfriends or whatever the hell else _however the hell she wants_ , and Aubrey shouldn’t be allowed to have a say in that. And her complete and across-the-board dismissal of _every_ Treble at Barden as an aloof douchebag/misogynist _just_ because she hates Bumper is a _little_ bit presumptuous. And Beca’s not really a big fan of that, either.

So, Beca knows all about Aubrey’s ridiculous rule. But she thought, perhaps naïvely, that after this year of growth and change and _chilling the fuck out_ , that maybe everyone would stop taking this dumb and frankly _psychotic_ rule so seriously, too. She assumed that an ICCA win plus redemption for Aubrey plus a powerful and innovative set _plus_ Bumper leaving the Trebles would all result in a closer, more natural bond between the two leading acapella groups on campus. She thought kissing Jesse would be no big deal.

So then what the fuck is Chloe’s _problem_?

____________________

Chloe’s never been crazy like Aubrey. Yeah, she takes this acapella stuff a _little_ too seriously, and yeah, she _was_ going to keep letting herself suffer with painful vocal nodes so she didn’t risk wrecking their (read: _Aubrey’s_ ) chance at a national title (which is insane for a whole different set of reasons), but she’s never been _crazy_ like Aubrey. She’s never been the one to push the crazy diets or the weird exercise regimens. She’s never tried to enforce archaic dating rules, or shut down Beca’s suggestions for modernizing their sound. So, yeah, Chloe is a little intense and she’s a little too willing to sacrifice her own personal well-being for something as inconsequential as an acapella competition, but she’s never been as bad as Aubrey. Aubrey is single-minded in her focus, in her determination, in her desire to achieve her end goal. But Beca’s always gotten the impression that, at the end of the day, Chloe cares more about the integrity of the group than she does about the potential for victory. And that’s something Beca’s always admired about her.

But when Beca kisses Jesse at their final performance, it’s like Chloe just about loses her mind.

And the craziest part is, Beca _totally_ isn’t expecting it. She’s ready for an Aubrey freak-out — those are pretty much par for the course, these days — because as far as she’s concerned there’s absolutely _no_ _way_ Aubrey would ever react well to one of her Bellas swapping spit with a Treble, especially not so _publicly_. So, Beca’s prepared, with shoulders set and her determined face firmly in-place, when she meanders back towards the other Bellas. She’s flushed, and a little breathless, and her lips tingle where they were pressed against Jesse’s, but she’s prepared. She makes it backstage to where their little group is congregated and braces herself for a firm talking-to, for Aubrey to scold her or curse her name or shoot her the stink-eye.

But none of that happens.

Aubrey just looks at her, her expression carefully unreadable. “Well,” she finally says, after a long pause, “at least he’s not Bumper.”

And Beca almost can’t believe it, because knowing Aubrey, that’s probably as close to approval as she’s ever going to get from her.

With Aubrey’s nod of encouragement, the rest of the Bellas swarm her. Cynthia Rose whoops loudly as Amy tackles her in a hug so fierce, they’re almost sent toppling to the ground. Stacie keeps shooting her winks, which is confusing, but Beca hardly notices. She feels lighter than air. Absolutely _nothing_ is going to spoil this for her.

But then she notices that Chloe is staring at her strangely. Beca can’t understand it, can’t place the emotion flickering its way across her eyes, tugging at the corners of her mouth. It’s confusing, and out-of-place, and it makes Beca’s stomach feel like it’s filling with lead (which is never a good sign).

But before she has the chance to ask Chloe what’s wrong, what’s got her looking so mopey and sad amidst this explosion of joy around her, Amy punches her on the shoulder and starts asking her all these questions about Jesse, about the kiss, about if he _“tongues as good as he sings”_ which… gross. But Beca’s attention is effectively diverted.

When she turns back towards Chloe a minute later, she’s nowhere to be seen.

____________________

Beca doesn’t see her again until the next morning, when they’re all clambering onto the bus — hung-over and supremely sleep-deprived, but still giddy and high off of their win. Chloe has a hoodie on, pulled up over her head to hide her face. She has a pair of gigantic sunglasses perched on her nose, too, and with her head leaning against the window, it’s hard to tell whether she’s awake or not.

Beca makes her way back towards her, picking her feet over strewn bags and sprawling legs. She sits down next to Chloe gingerly, careful not to wake her.

But Chloe, it turns out, is already awake. Without moving an inch from her position, she says, quietly, “You didn’t want to sit up front with the others?”

Beca shakes her head. “I was worried about you. We didn’t see you at the celebration last night. Thought something might be wrong.”

Chloe shrugs. “‘M fine.”

“You don’t _seem_ fine. This is, like, the biggest day of our lives, dude. But you look like someone just killed your cat.”

Chloe shoots Beca a look out of the corner of her eye. “Don’t talk about Mr. Whiskers like that.”

“Right,” she says nervously, “sorry. I know how you feel about your cat. I didn’t mean to…” She trails off when Chloe turns away from her again, clearly disinterested in continuing this conversation.

But Beca, stubborn as ever and genuinely concerned for her friend, can’t seem to let it go. She clears her throat. “So, um… _are_ you okay?”

Chloe keeps looking out the window, her expression unreadable. “I said I was _fine_ , Beca.”

“Okay. Well, Amy and I were thinking of—”

“Sorry, do you mind moving?” Chloe cuts her off almost immediately. Beca recoils slightly from the edge behind request. “I think I just wanna sleep, today. Didn’t get a lot last night.”

“Oh. Um… yeah, okay.” Beca stands from the seat hesitantly, like she doesn’t quite know whether or not she should leave. “Well, I’ll just be…” she gestures towards the front of the bus, “if… if you need me.”

Chloe doesn’t even nod in recognition, and Beca trudges off to the front of the bus feeling dejected, though she can’t quite figure out why.

____________________

It’s several days later when Beca hears a soft, timid knock on her door. She frowns a little. No one texted her about getting dinner, but since it _is_ almost 5, she figures it’s probably just one of the Bellas stopping by to see if she’s hungry. (She is, for the record.)

“Coming!” she calls, clambering off her bed and bounding across the floor in a few quick strides. She pulls her door open but freezes almost at once when she recognizes the figure standing on the other side.

Beca blinks a few quick times. She wasn’t expecting a visitor at this time of day, and she _definitely_ wasn’t expecting _Chloe_ to be the one knocking on her door _._ Especially since she’s spent the past few days steadfastly ignoring Beca, refusing to return her texts or answer the phone when Beca calls.

Beca’s heart beats a little quicker in her chest. She ignores it. “Hey,” she says quietly, a hand braced on her doorframe, the other clutching the inside knob tightly, just out of Chloe’s line of sight. She fights against the urge to run a hand through her hair, and suppresses a cringe as she thinks about what she must look like (disheveled and grimy and lazy) after a full day of basically lying in bed doing nothing.

Chloe smiles at her, though it looks weak. “Hey,” she says back, just as quietly. She looks… well, to put it kindly, she looks a bit of a mess. Her hair is flat and lifeless where it lays on her head. She’s not wearing any makeup, and the dark bags under her eyes stand out in stark relief against her pale skin. She’s wearing a pair of jeans, ratty sneakers, and an old sweatshirt that must belong to an old boyfriend, because it’s about 3 sizes too big on her. She looks tiny, and strangely _young_ , and the image is more than a little unsettling.

Chloe chews on her lip, looking nervous. “Um… do you think…” She takes a deep breath, like she’s steadying herself. “Can we talk?”

Beca nods quickly. “Yeah. Yeah, of course. Where do—”

“Oh!” a surprised voice says from somewhere down the hall. Beca and Chloe turn in unison to see Jesse, with a stack of movies in-hand and an empty bowl tucked under his arm. He smiles genially as he approaches, looking between them like he can’t sense anything is wrong. “Sorry, I should have called. This a bad time?”

Beca opens her mouth to say, _Yes, it is a bad time, please come back later_ , but Chloe beats her to it. “No,” she says quickly, right as Beca is about to turn him away. “No, I was just leaving.” She shoots a quick glance in Beca’s direction. “Didn’t mean to interrupt anything.”

“You weren’t—” Beca starts to say, but Chloe’s already spun on her heel. She’s halfway to the exit before Beca can even really register that she’s left.

Jesse frowns, looking more than a little confused. “That was weird. Is she okay?”

Beca feels helpless. Lost, helpless, and absolutely baffled. “She’s been acting weird for a few days,” Beca says quietly. “I’m worried about her,” she softly admits. She worries on her lower lip as she turns to Jesse. Her eyes keep darting towards her dorm’s exit, bouncing between Jesse and his charming smile and his clearly-planned movie night and the place where a dejected-looking Chloe just disappeared.

In the end, it’s pretty easy to make her decision. “I’m sorry, Jesse,” she apologizes, “but I need to—”

He nods quickly. “Yeah, of course. Go see what’s wrong.”

Beca smiles gratefully. “Thank you,” she says quietly. She stands on tip-toes to kiss him quickly on the cheek before dashing off in pursuit of Chloe.

Once she makes it outside, she spends a few frantic seconds whipping her head back-and-forth, trying to pick Chloe out from the throng of students headed off toward the dining halls for an early dinner. She finally catches sight of her about fifty yards away, walking slowly in the direction of her off-campus apartment. Her shoulders are hunched and she looks beat-down, and Beca’s heart does an uncomfortable little _pitter-pat_ in her chest at the sight. “Hey!” Beca calls, jogging towards her friend. But either Chloe can’t hear her or she’s purposefully ignoring her, because she doesn’t turn around and she doesn’t slow her pace. If anything, she starts walking quicker. “Chloe, hey!” Beca tries again, picking up her own pace so that she’s almost running.

She skids to a stop next to Chloe, grabs her arm and pulls her to a stop, too. “Chloe,” Beca says again, this time more sternly, but whatever else she was going to say dies in her throat the second she sees Chloe’s face. “Woah, are you okay?”

Chloe swallows thickly and shakes her head. There are tears slipping down her face, leaking out of the corners of her eyes. It’s shocking, to say the least. “It’s nothing,” Chloe mumbles, but clearly it _is_ something, because people don’t just _burst into tears for_ _no reason._

“No, hey. Why are you crying?”

“It’s _nothing,_ Beca,” Chloe says. This time she yanks her arm away from Beca’s grasp. Beca doesn’t move to stop her. “Go back to _Jesse,_ ” she says his name with something akin to a sneer. “I’m _fine._ So just leave me alone, alright?”

Beca pulls a face. “What the hell? No. You said you wanted to talk, so let’s talk.”

“I changed my mind, okay?” Chloe’s starting to look and sound angry, now. Which is confusing in and of itself. “So why don’t you go play this nice girl act out for someone who gives a shit. Sound good?”

“You don’t need to bite my head off, dude. _I’m_ not the one who ran out of there.”

Chloe scoffs and wipes furiously at her eyes. “Whatever,” she mumbles. “Not like you _wanted_ me to stay. Not after your _boyfriend_ showed up.” There it is again, that weird, hostile tone of voice she had when she said Jesse’s name, earlier.

“Okay,” Beca huffs, crossing her arms over her chest, “what the hell is your problem with Jesse?”

“I don’t have a problem with Jesse.”

“Bull shit. You totally do. You’ve been acting like a psycho ever since we won ICCAs, ever since we started dating.” Chloe’s nostrils flare at that. Beca points to her face wildly. “ _See_? Like that, _just_ like that. You were all ready to talk just now, right until _he_ showed up, so _clearly_ you have a problem with him. What is it?”

Chloe shrugs. “He’s a Treble. Isn’t that enough?”

“Oh no, not you too,” Beca shakes her head, feeling suddenly and inexplicably angry. “I might have bought that argument coming from _Aubrey_ , but I don’t believe for one second that you _actually_ care about that. You _never_ cared about it before. You were the one who tried to talk Aubrey out of kicking that girl whatshername out of the group for sleeping with Unicycle at the beginning of the year! But now that _I’m_ dating a Treble it’s this huge issue for you?” She shakes her head. “Bull shit. I don’t buy it.”

“Okay, so… so maybe it’s not that he’s a Treble! Maybe it’s just that he has stupid hair and he has _terrible_ taste in movies—”

“You don’t _know_ he has terrible taste in movies.”

Chloe scoffs again. “Oh, _please_. It’s like he Googled ‘Top 20 Greatest Movies of All Time’ and then just regurgitated it back at you. Like that’s a good substitute for having an actual personality. I bet Paul Thomas Anderson is his favorite director.”

“I have no idea who that is.”

“I know you don’t.”

“Well… so _what_ if his taste in movies is shit? Also, holy shit, dude. Didn’t know you cared this much about movie stuff. Aren’t you an English and Music double major?”

“Just because it isn’t my _major_ doesn’t mean I can’t have an _opinion_. And my _opinion is_ that Jesse is a jag.”

“You don’t even _know_ him!” It’s beginning to dawn on Beca that they’re practically having a screaming match in the middle of the quad, but at this point she’s too worked-up to really care. “You’ve never even given him a chance!”

“Well, what did you _expect_ , Beca? For me to just be happy, smiley, bubbly Chloe like always? For me to _like_ this?”

“I expected you to be _happy_ for me, dude! You know, like a _friend?_ You didn’t have to _like_ him, I _guess_ , but you could have at least _pretended_ to be excited for me. I _like_ Jesse. He’s a good guy. And you didn’t have to throw me a damn party or anything, but could you maybe have _acted_ like a person who cares about other people for one _freaking_ second?”

Chloe’s gone red in the face. She lets out an angry huff of air and takes a step towards Beca, her eyes wide and shining bright with what may be anger or what may be tears; it’s hard to tell. “I care about other people,” she hisses dangerously. “Don’t you _dare_ say that I don’t.”

“Yeah, well… well _clearly_ you don’t care about _me_ or else you’d stop being such a bitch about this whole thing and actually _talk_ to me again.”

Chloe’s face freezes. Her eyes are hard and when she speaks her voice is like ice. “You know what? Fuck you, Beca. I thought…” She shakes her head. “Well, I guess I was wrong. I thought you were…” She pauses, her expression dark and glowering. “But you don’t know anything about me, do you?”

That stops Beca in her tracks. She opens her mouth to say something, _anything_ , but her words die on her tongue. She can’t think of a single thing to say, can’t formulate any response that makes sense.

What the hell does she even _mean_? Of _course_ she knows Chloe; Chloe’s the closest thing she’s ever had to a best friend. What is she even _talking_ about?

Chloe must read something sinister in Beca’s silence, because she clenches her jaw and scoffs. “Yeah. That’s what I thought.” And just like that she turns and stomps off, leaving Beca — confused and flustered and out of breath — alone in the middle of the quad. She stares after Chloe, feeling helpless, feeling like she should do something, should _say_ something, should go after her and… and _apologize_ , maybe, or else…

She turns around and heads back to her room.

She doesn’t go after her.

____________________

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Follow me on [ tumblr. ](https://morningsound15.tumblr.com/)


	3. Drunk Texting

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It isn’t until late June that Beca hears from Chloe again. It’s a curious bout of communication; a string of semi-coherent texts that only serves to confuse Beca more, that only adds to the complexity of the situation. She hoped talking to Chloe again would make things _clearer,_ would make things _easier,_ but it only makes things more complicated.
> 
> It goes a little something like this:

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **_Wednesday, July 25: Drunk Texting_ **
> 
> My take on Bechloe Week 2018. The chapters move chronologically and can be read as a sequence of one-shots within the same universe.
> 
> Sorry (again) for the late posting, I’m trying to get back on schedule but knowing me that probably isn’t gonna happen… I’m terrible at schedules… But woo 2 chapters in 1 day! Unprecedented.

____________________

_I mind how we lay in June, such a transparent summer morning_

____________________

It isn’t until late June that Beca hears from Chloe again. It’s a curious bout of communication; a string of semi-coherent texts that only serves to confuse Beca more, that only adds to the complexity of the situation. She hoped talking to Chloe again would make things _clearer_ , would make things _easier_ , but it only makes things more complicated.

It goes a little something like this:

____________________

 **Chlo (9:47 p.m.)**  
_M sorry  
_

**Chlo (9:50 p.m.)**  
_Im sory for bein an ass  
_

**Chlo (9:54 p.m.)**  
_in rlly sorry beca  
_

**Chlo (10:00 p.m.)**  
_I kno ur gettng these_  
_u have red receipts on_  


**Chlo (10:03 p.m.)**  
_iplease becs_

 **Beca (10:04 p.m.)**  
_it’s fine.  
_

**Chlo (10:04 p.m.)**  
_Not fine_

 **Chlo (10:04 p.m.)**  
_Ur mad at me  
_

**Chlo (10:05 p.m.)**  
_I never meant fr u to be mad_

 **Chlo (10:05 p.m.)**  
_Pls dont b mad its makng_  
_me rlly sad_

 **Beca (10:06 p.m.)**  
_i said it’s fine, chloe.  
_

**Chlo (10:07 p.m.)**  
_Im sorry for whtt i said_

 **Chlo (10:07 p.m.)  
** _i dont hate jesse_

**Beca (10:07 p.m.)**  
_really seems like you do.  
_

**Chlo (10:08 p.m.)**  
_i dont hate jesse_

 **Chlo (10:08 p.m.)**  
_i just hate that hes  
dating u_

 **Beca (10:10 p.m.)**  
_are you drunk?  
_

**Chlo (10:10 p.m.)  
** _no_

 **Beca (10:10 p.m.)**  
_right.  
_

**Chlo (10:11 p.m.)**  
_Ima little drunk_

 **Chlo (10:11 p.m.)  
** _but im still srry_

**Beca (10:14 p.m.)**  
_we can talk about this later.  
_

**Beca (10:14 p.m.)**  
_drink some coffee and go to bed  
_

**Chlo (10:15 p.m.)**  
_I dont want u to date jesse_

 **Beca (10:15 p.m.)**  
_why is that any of your_  
business?  


**Chlo (10:17 p.m.)**  
_Ur to good for him_

 **Beca (10:18 p.m.)**  
_goodnight, chloe.  
_

**Chlo (10:20 p.m.)  
** _I didnt graduate._

**Chlo (10:20 p.m.)  
** _Thats whyim drunk rn_

 **Chlo (10:21 p.m.)**  
_i failed russina lit so they  
arent letting me graduate_

 

“Fuck,” Beca curses under her breath. She only hesitates for a few seconds before she presses Chloe’s name in her contacts and calls her.

 _“Heyyy, Becs.”_ She’s slurring her words. Not surprising, considering the mistakes in her texts, but it’s still unsettling to hear. Beca’s never interacted with Chloe when she’s been _this_ out of it. Beca’s seen her drunk before, but never quite this shit-faced.

“I’m so sorry,” Beca says, because it’s the truth. She knows enough by now to know that reasoning with a drunk person never turns out well. But Chloe is clearly upset, and she’s clearly hurting, and Beca is definitely worried about her. So she’s going to say she’s sorry, maybe try to cheer Chloe up a little bit, and then she’s going to go to bed and they’re going to go back to avoiding each other.

Yes. That sounds like a good plan.

Beca clears her throat and continues, “I didn’t know about… I thought you graduated.”

 _“Nope!”_ Chloe sounds far more cheerful than Beca expected her to, all things considered. She probably has the alcohol to thank for that. _“With ICCAs and my surgery, dinn’t have time to study. Flunked my final! So they’re holdin’ me back.”_

Beca grimaces. “Shit, Chlo. I’m so sorry.”

_“‘S fine. Don’t wanna talk about it.”_

Beca shakes her head. “I just wanted to call to make sure you were okay. But it’s late, and we should both get some sleep.”

Maybe Chloe doesn’t hear her. That’s certainly a possibility. But Beca thinks it’s far more likely that she just… refuses to listen. Either way, the next words out of her mouth are definitely _not_ a jovial sign-off. _“I don’t want you to date Jesse,”_ she says seriously.

Beca sighs. Looks like they aren’t going to be able to avoid this conversation any longer. “Yeah. You keep saying that.”

_“I want you t’date me.”_

Beca’s heart stutters in her chest, then stops beating. “ _What_?” she asks, her question coming out as the tiniest puff of air.

_“I like you. I like you **so** much. And I di-didn’t do anythin’ ‘bout it becaussse I was gradu-graduating. But I’m not, now. And I don’ want you t’date him.”_

“I… you’re _drunk_ , Chloe. We can talk about this in the morning.”

_“I’m not gonna change m’mind just because I get sober, y’know. I like you, Beca, and I wanna date you.”_

“You’re… I can’t just _dump_ Jesse because you drunk texted me one night, Chlo.”

_“Yes you can.”_

“No I _can’t,_ Chloe. That’s not how this works. And besides, I’m not… and I don’t even…” She’s flushed, flustered. Her cheeks are pink and she can feel her heartbeat in her palms. “I’m not _gay_ ,” she hisses into the phone, her eyes glancing nervously around her, like someone might be eavesdropping.

Chloe hums in that soft, sleepy way of hers, the way she gets right before she falls asleep. _“‘M not gay, either,”_ she says. _“I’m pan. I still like you.”_

“I… don’t even know what that means.”

_“Means I like people regardless of gennnnder ‘dentity or expression.”_

Beca sighs deeply. “Chloe…”

_“Break up with Jesse. Go out with me.”_

“This isn’t fair. You know that? What you’re asking me to do, it’s not—”

_“I know. ‘M bein’ selfish. But I **really** like you. And I think you like me, too.”_

“I can’t just… I have a _boyfriend_ , I’m not about to—”

_“You’ve been dating a month. ‘M hardly gettin’ in the way of **true love,** here.”_

That… okay, in all fairness, that _is_ sort of true. They aren’t even using the boyfriend/girlfriend label yet, for Christ’s sake. They haven’t even really been out on an official _date,_ yet. They kissed at ICCAs and then basically left for the summer a week and a half later. And yeah, they’ve been talking and texting like practically every day, but… well. Chloe _kind of_ has a point.

But she’ll be damned if she ever admits it out loud.

This is all so confusing. None of it makes sense. One minute Chloe’s angry with her, yelling at her, can’t stand the sight of her, and then next she’s on the phone with her, drunk, in the dead of night, telling her to _break up with her boyfriend_ so that they can _date?_

Is she having a stroke?

Rather than agree with her flat-out (she’s nothing if not stubborn), Beca changes tactics. “You haven’t talked to me,” she whispers furiously. “I haven’t heard from you in like a _month,_ Chloe. No texts, no calls… you ghost me for _weeks_ and then expect me to drop everything just for—”

 _“Look,”_ Chloe cuts her off, voice shaky and words unsteady, _“‘m sorry ‘bout that. I was sad and mad. But ‘m not, anymore. Because now I know I wanna date you.”_

“I don’t think you’re hearing me, Chloe. I don’t—” She cuts herself off. Her heart is pounding away in her chest, beating an erratic rhythm that’s making her head spin and her stomach turn uncomfortably. Her palms are sweating and her hands are shaking. She hadn’t noticed.

This can’t be happening to her. It _can’t be_. It’s _impossible._ This is _Chloe Beale_ she’s talking about. There’s no way _Chloe_ actually wants to _date_ her. Chloe’s just upset because she failed Russian Lit so now she has to repeat the year. She’s drunk, and upset, and she has some weird vendetta against Jesse, for some reason. That’s all this is. Some half-assed, stupid, drunken plan to get Beca to break up with her boyfriend so that… so that she’ll stay focused on… on the Bellas, on the set list, on ICCAs next year.

Yeah. That must be it.

(She must have noticed the way Beca looks at her, the way she can’t help but stare, the way her eyes linger just a little too long on places they shouldn’t, the way Beca’s breath catches for just a second in her throat whenever Chloe’s hands find hers. She must have noticed, and now she’s using it to her advantage. That _has_ to be what’s happening. That’s the only explanation.)

She feels a little sick.

This isn’t real. This _can’t_ be real. But… if this really _is_ just Chloe putting one over on her… God, what a cruel, _hurtful_ thing for her to do. What a terrible, horrible, _horrifically cruel_ trick for Chloe to play on her.

“You don’t mean this,” Beca whispers into the phone. She means for it to come out strong, iron-willed and sure, but instead she sounds young and scared and hopeful and sad, all at the same time. It is _not_ the image she’s trying to project. But she can’t seem to help herself. Once the first words are out, the rest tumble after them. “It’s… this is some sort of trick, some sort of—”

 _“Why would I joke about this?”_ For a moment Chloe almost sounds sober, almost sounds sure, and Beca’s heart jumps at the prospect, at the very notion that… maybe…

But then Chloe giggles into the phone, and the illusion is shattered.

Beca wants to throw up. “This isn’t what you mean…” she says quietly, shaking her head very slowly back and forth. The movement is comforting, though it’s doing very little to quiet her raging stomach. “It’s not what you want. You’re… you’re going to change your mind tomorrow. You’re gonna wake up sober and embarrassed and—”

 _“Nope,”_ Chloe says again, still sounding cheerful. Beca is about three seconds away from breaking down into full-blown _sobs_ , but Chloe sounds like she’s floating on air. _“Not gonna happen.”_

“You don’t _know that,_ Chloe.”

_“Look, ‘f I wake up tomorrow an’ change my mind I promise, I’ll never bring it up again. I won’t bother you. I’ll… I’ll play the happy best friend. Give Jesse a big ol’ hug. But that’s not gonna happen.”_

“Chloe…”

_“I promise, Beca.”_

 Beca wants to scream at her. She wants to cry and yell and curse. _Don’t make promises you can’t keep,_ she wants to say. _Don’t promise you’ll look after my heart and then break it._

She doesn’t say any of that, of course. Instead she just takes a deep breath, just enough to hold back the tears she can feel pricking right behind her eyes, and says, “I’ll talk to you later, Chloe.”

 _“Tomorrow,”_ Chloe says like it’s a promise. _“You’ll talk to me tomorrow.”_

Beca hangs up without another word. She falls asleep with her head buried in her pillow and with tears drying on her cheeks. She tries not to think about Chloe but, of course, that’s all she dreams about.

____________________

 **Chlo (11:23 a.m.)  
** _I haven’t changed my mind._

____________________

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Follow me on [ tumblr. ](https://morningsound15.tumblr.com/)


	4. Why?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She always assumed returning to school would make her feel happy, rejuvenated, maybe even energized and motivated.
> 
> She should have known better.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **_Thursday, July 26: Why?_ **
> 
> My take on Bechloe Week 2018. The chapters move chronologically and can be read as a sequence of one-shots within the same universe.
> 
> Sorry (again) for the late post… like super duper late whoops…

____________________

 _You settled your head athwart my hips and gently turned over upon me,_  
_And parted the shirt from my bosom-bone, and plunged your tongue to my barestrip heart,_  
_And reached till you felt my beard, and reached till you held my feet._

____________________

She always assumed returning to school (now that she actually _likes_ going there, that is) would be something she could call an overall-positive experience. (A net gain, her dad would say.) She always assumed that she’d feel excited, maybe even eager. Not for classes, obviously (she really could take or leave the _school_ part of school; makes little difference to her), but for all the other things surrounding returning to school. Friends, Bellas rehearsals, freedom from parental types, her job at the radio station, her own space to live and work where she doesn’t have to worry about anything except her own (perhaps selfish) desires and motivations.

She always assumed returning to school would make her feel happy, rejuvenated, maybe even energized and motivated.

She should have known better.

Now that she’s actually here, that couldn’t be further from the truth. Her heart is beating slowly but _hard,_ almost _painful_ the way it hammers up at her throat, her chest. Her stomach feels like it’s full of lead, sinking down down down to her feet, her toes. She’s nervous and nauseous, and not in a good way. She feels like she might ralf.

She’s been weird towards Jesse, recently. She _knows_ she has been. Part of it has been on purpose, trying to distance them naturally and gradually (she’s never been very good at confrontation, never been very good at severing ties or adopting ‘conscientious uncoupling’ strategies or anything like that), but most of it’s just been because of guilt. She just feels _lousy_ whenever she thinks about him. And whenever she thinks about the fact that she kind of, _sort of_ made a promise to Jesse (something along the lines of ‘yeah I think you’re cute and you think I’m cute let’s maybe try this whole dating thing when we come back in the fall?’) that now she’s gotta back out of.

In all fairness, she _really_ did not expect the out-of-left-field, Chloe Beale Drunken Confession Of Feelings over the summer. And, look, if you had asked her a couple months ago whether or not she thought she and Jesse, were, like… _soulmates,_ or whatever, she would have said _hell no, no way, you’re out of your goddamn mind._

But. Y’know. Still doesn’t really make it _right._ She’s not operating under the assumption that she’s about to do something _good,_ here.

Boy, she feels lousy about all this.

Chloe, of course, hasn’t stopped texting her all month. Which… okay, Beca’s not gonna lie and say that she’s _annoyed_ by it, because she isn’t. She really, _really_ likes Chloe, and the more she talks to her, the more that becomes apparent. But it’s _hard_ talking to Chloe, feeling that nervous, giddy sort of energy whenever Chloe texts her or calls her, when she, ostensibly, still has a sort-of-boyfriend. If she can even call Jesse _that._ But he’s definitely _something,_ and he was definitely _something_ before _Chloe_ was _something,_ and that means that _his_ something technically trumps _her_ something, and so—

(She talks herself in circles like this for weeks.)

The point is, she’s made up her mind. Jesse is nice and all; he’s cute and he’s sweet and he’s got decent taste in music and he seems like a really good guy, a really genuine guy, and that’s always a good thing, in her book. But he’s not… it’s hard to explain. There’s just something about him that isn’t _quite_ — that isn’t _exactly_ —

(You see her dilemma, here.)

He’s just, y’know… not Chloe. And maybe that’s the biggest distinction, here. It isn’t because he’s a guy (she’s pretty sure, at least; as far as she can tell her romantic/sexual attractions still pretty much span the entire length of the gender binary), and it isn’t because of anything he’s done or said. He’s just _him,_ and she’s _her,_ and…

God, can it really just _be_ that simple? It doesn’t feel like it should be.

Look, it’s not even an _either-or_ type situation. Not _really,_ at least. Yeah, she’s really into Chloe, and yeah, Chloe’s really into her. But that’s not… that’s not, like, the _main_ reason she’s breaking up with Jesse. (It’s definitely _a_ reason, she won’t lie about that, but she’s pretty sure it’s, like… less than 50% of her decision.) She’s just been doing a lot of thinking on it, recently, and she’s pretty sure she was never really that into Jesse in the first place. Like yeah, he’s always been charming, but she kind of only agreed to date him because he was pretty annoyingly persistent and wore her down. She certainly didn’t enter into her freshman year at Barden _looking_ for something serious or long-term. And Jesse’s nice enough, but they’ve been talking most of the summer (long before Chloe’s late-night word-vomit of emotions) and they just… don’t really click? Like they don’t seem to have much in common?

It’s way easier for her to text and communicate with the other Bellas, with just _friends_ of hers. With Jesse, it can sometimes feel like pulling teeth. And then when she’s talking to anyone else… Like Chloe, for instance. With Chloe it’s like she doesn’t even need to _think_ about it, like things are just so _easy_ and so _natural_ and—

(Okay, so maybe 60% of her decision.)

But, either way, she’s made up her mind. And she’s back at school, now. And Jesse’s been texting her excitedly all week ( _God,_ she feels guilty about all that), and… she’s gonna do it. She’s going to. She’s gonna end things with him. She just needs to sack up, and actually—

There’s a knock on her door, and Beca’s stomach sinks. There’s only 2 people it could possibly be on the other side (since most of the Bellas are still moving into their own dorms/apartments): her father or Jesse. Neither one she particularly wants to see, right now. For entirely different reasons, obviously, but…

She takes a breath and crosses her bedroom. She keeps her hand on the door knob for a few seconds, like she’s trying to buy herself just the tiniest bit of time, before she shakes her head and opens her door, ready to face the music.

Sure enough, Jesse stands just on the other side with one had raised, poised as if to knock, the other clutching a movie, and a wry grin on his face. “Hey!” he exclaims. “Sorry to surprise you like this, but your RA said you’d already moved in, so…” He waves the DVD in his hand, and Beca can see that it’s a copy of something called _Pulp Fiction._ “Movie date?”

She thinks about it. She honestly, genuinely does. For a whole two seconds, she seriously considers what it might be like if she just… _keeps_ dating Jesse. It wouldn’t be so bad, right? Like yeah, he’s not her soulmate or anything, but he’s decent. And if she just keeps dating him, if she just invites him in to watch a movie and eat some popcorn, then she doesn’t have to go through this whole horrible conversation where she lets him down easy, the whole “it’s not you, it’s _me,_ ” thing, that fucking tired ass cliché that makes her want to blow her brains out. Maybe everything would just be easier, just be _calmer,_ if she just… kept seeing him. At least for a little while. Maybe help him adjust to the idea, before she just… rips the Band-Aid off.

But then she thinks about Chloe, just for a moment. And just like that, her mind is made up.

(Maybe more than 60% of her decision.)

“I…” She opens the door a little wider, gestures with her head for him to come inside. Once he steps over the threshold, she takes a breath, closes the door, and turns around.

He’s grinning around the room, his eyes falling on her music collection, her posters, the new bedspread her dad picked out for her without telling her (she had grumbled at the time, but the truth of the matter is it _is_ a pretty classy set, and she actually likes it a lot, she just doesn’t like to admit it). “Nice digs,” he says, his eyes lingering on one of the new pieces of art hanging above her bed. “You do that yourself?”

“Um… no. Cynthia Rose drew that, actually.” Jesse hums and turns from the poster, taking the time to look around the room more closely. Beca just grimaces. “Jesse… Look, I think we need to talk.”

He laughs. “Uh oh. That’s never a good sign.” He says it like it’s a joke, but one glance at Beca’s face and the smile falls from his lips. “Oh,” he says quietly. “Oh no.”

Beca lets out a shaky breath. “I’m sorry.”

“You’re breaking up with me?”

“I…” Another breath. “Yeah. I am.”

Jesse sits down heavily on her bed. She almost wants to reach out and stop him, keep him from making himself comfortable, because the longer he stays here the more awkward this is going to get. But she knows that she can’t in good conscious _actually_ do that; he deserves a conversation, at least. Especially since this is all coming pretty out-of-the-blue, without warning. (But it _isn’t_ out-of-the-blue; not really. She’s been pulling away steadily for _weeks_ , now; has been reluctant to talk on the phone and has been reluctant to start up new conversations. If he were a touch more perceptive, he probably would have seen this coming.)

Jesse keeps shaking his head, slowly, back-and-forth. Like he can’t believe it, maybe, or like he’s refusing to. “W…” he starts, but quickly stumbles to a stop. He glances up at her. “I mean… can I ask why? It just… I mean, I feel like this doesn’t make any sense. I thought… I thought we were gonna try to make it work when we got back to school?”

Beca fidgets where she stands. “We… we _were._ It’s just—”

“So then why are you _dumping_ me?” Jesse says, cutting her off. He seems a little angry, now; a little put-out. Like he’d been expecting some grand gift and now was watching it being snatched away from him. “Is there someone else?” Beca glances away. He stares at her, his expression hardening. “You’re kidding me.”

“No, I…” She rubs a hand over her eyes. “That’s not why I’m ending things, Jesse. C’mon.”

But either he’s not listening to her or he’s trying to purposefully antagonize her, because he just scoffs. He stands up then, his arms crossed over his chest. “There’s someone else?” he asks, incredulously. “Some other _guy_? What… who is he? What’s his name?”

Beca shakes her head. “There’s no other guy, Jesse.”

“Like hell there isn’t. That’s the only reason you wouldn’t try to make this work.” He’s grabbed onto the excuse like a life-line. (If there’s somebody else to blame — Beca, some non-existent external threat, etc. — then he doesn’t have to feel culpable. Beca, if nothing else, understands the appeal.) “Things are _good_ with us, Becs.” He sounds almost desperate, now. “They make _sense._ ”

But it just feels like he’s talking out of his ass. Trying to make more of their relationship than what it was. Maybe because their beginning felt so cinematic, so he wants their ending to be dramatic in the same way. But it’s more than a little ridiculous, though, since they were _barely even a couple_ and he _has_ to know that. “I mean…” she huffs— “aren’t you getting a _little_ ahead of yourself, here? It’s not like… we’ve only been _kind-of_ seeing each other for a few months, Jess. And yeah, things have been _fine,_ but—”

“So you’re telling me there’s no other guy?” he interrupts. “Look me in the eyes and say that, Becs.” He still looks disgruntled, still looks disbelieving, and Beca grows frustrated with him all over again.

And it’s _annoying,_ the way he’s acting. Like it can’t just be _enough_ that she doesn’t want to see him anymore, like that can’t be reason in and of itself. And, also, while she’s at it, it’s _super_ annoying that he’s assuming that it has to be a _guy_ she’s more interested in than him. And annoyingly heteronormative of him. So, fine. Whatever. He’s _so_ convinced she’s leaving him for someone else? _Fine_. _He’s_ the one who wants to know. _He’s_ the one who can’t just leave it alone.

“I said there’s no other _guy,_ Jesse,” she snaps. “Not that there wasn’t somebody else.”

“What are you talking ab—” His words die on his tongue. “Oh.”

Beca shifts uncomfortably. Now that she’s said it out loud, she almost wants to take it back; almost wants to reach out and grab the words and shove them back into her mouth and swallow them back down. But it’s too late for that, now. “Yeah.”

“W… I mean… I didn’t know…” He looks an interesting cross between bemused and nervous. Beca would laugh at his expression, if they were in literally any other situation. “You’re gay?”

Her heart clenches at the question. “I’m…” _it’s complicated—_ “I don’t know. I think I’m still trying to figure things out.”

He looks a bit shell-shocked. She supposes that’s better than angry and disgruntled. “Woah,” he murmurs quietly. He notices then that the movie he’s brought with him has fallen to the floor sometime over the course of their conversation. He bends down and picks it up, turns it over and over in his hands. “So, um… Who is it, then?” he asks, not looking up to meet her eyes.

Beca flushes. “Jesse… I don’t think—”

“C’mon, Becs.” His voice is quiet; half-pleading. “I think I at least have the right to know who it is who’s stealing my girl.”

Beca rolls her eyes. “She isn’t _stealing me,_ Jesse. And I’m not _anyone’s_ girl.”

“Is it someone I know? Someone at school?”

“Jesse…”

“It’s Chloe, isn’t it?” Beca’s heart does a somersault at that. She swallows thickly. Jesse must read something like truth in her expression, because all he does is sigh and drop his head, almost resigned. “Yeah, I figured it would be. You guys have always been weirdly close.”

“It’s not her fault, Jess,” Beca says, desperate for him to understand. “I think… I’ve—I’ve been confused for a really long time. And… I don’t think this was going to work out either way.”

“Because you’re gay.”

Her hands are shaking. She clenches them into fists to stop the trembling. “Because we aren’t _right_ together, Jesse,” she corrects. “We have basically nothing in common, except for the acapella thing.”

“I mean… in all fairness, that’s a pretty big thing.”

“Maybe. But it isn’t enough. And it’s not… look, this isn’t _about_ Chloe. I just haven’t felt good about _us_ in a while.”

Jesse sighs again. He seems to be doing a lot of that, lately. “Look, I… I think I’m just gonna go, I think. For some reason my day’s took a turn for the worse, recently, and I kinda just wanna go sit in my room alone for a little while.”

“I’m really sorry, Jesse. I swear, I never meant for this—”

“Look, it’s not your fault. You can’t help how you feel. It just…” He swallows thickly and blinks a few rapid times, like he’s trying to stave off tears. That thought — that he might actually be _crying_ over her — is both unexpected and distressing. _God,_ she feels lousy. “It just blows, is all.” He manages to shoot her a small, watery little smile. “Well, guess I’ll see you around, Becs. Have a good life.”

“Jesse…” She tries to reach out, tries to stop him (but she gets nowhere close to actually touching him, so maybe she was never really trying to stop him at all; maybe it was just a half-hearted attempt for appearances’ sake alone) but he slips out the door before she can do much of anything.

Beca sighs and sits down on her bed, puts her head in her hands, and tries to convince herself that she’s just done the right thing.

____________________

 **Amy (12:49 p.m.)**  
To: **bellas**  
hey everyone

 **Amy (12:49 p.m.)**  
To: **bellas**  
girls rule  & boys drool party at  
my place tonight

 **Amy (12:49 p.m.)**  
To: **bellas**  
BYOB because federally im prohibited  
from buying alcohol in 29 us states

 **Stacie (12:50 p.m.)**  
To: **bellas  
**!!!!!!!!!!

 **Lilly (12:51 p.m.)**  
To: **bellas  
** *thumbs up*

 **CR (12:51 p.m.)**  
To: **bellas  
** heck yeah pitches!!!

 **CR (12:51 p.m.)**  
To: **bellas  
** cant wait 2 c u pretty ladies tonight!

 **Jessica (12:54 p.m.)**  
To: **bellas  
** Can’t wait!

 **Chloe (12:55 p.m.)**  
To: **bellas  
** Nice! I love a party

 **Chloe (12:55 p.m.)**  
To: **bellas  
** but why are we having one???

 **Amy (1:02 p.m.)**  
To: **bellas**  
beca and jesse broke up so  
were gonna get smashed and  
egg the treble house

 **Beca (1:03 p.m.)**  
To: **bellas  
** thanks, amy.

 **Stacie (1:04 p.m.)**  
To: **bellas**  
beca im so sorry! he wasnt even  
that cute tho girl so his loss really

 **Lilly (1:05 p.m.)**  
To: **bellas  
** :(

 **CR (1:05 p.m.)**  
To: **bellas  
** first round’s on me, becs

 **CR (1:05 p.m.)**  
To: **bellas**  
well drankk away your sorrows  
tonight

____________________

 **_Incoming Call (1:05 p.m.)_ ** **  
** _Chloe Beale_

____________________

**(1 missed call)**

**_Incoming Call (1:07 p.m.)_ ** **  
** _Chloe Beale_

____________________

**(2 missed calls)**

**_Incoming Call (1:08 p.m.)_ ** **  
** _Chloe Beale_

____________________

**(3 missed calls)**

**_Incoming Call (1:10 p.m.)_ ** **  
** _Chloe Beale_

____________________

**(4 missed calls)**

**_Incoming Call (1:12 p.m.)_ ** **  
** _Chloe Beale_

The incessant buzzing from her pocket is starting to drive her nuts. She ignored it the first few times because shew as driving and figured whatever it was could wait until she got back from Target, but now it seems like whoever is trying to contact her is either in the middle of some huge emergency or else is _really_ trying to get on her nerves. Beca glances at her screen and rolls her eyes. She juggles her backpack and her computer for a second while she fumbles with her phone before she finally manages to unlock the screen and press it to her ear. “Dude,” she huffs, “I was _driving_ , so someone _better_ be dying because you _definitely_ didn’t need to call me like 20 times.”

_“I called you five times.”_

“Yeah, well, I thought my phone was exploding, so—”

_“You broke up with Jesse?”_

Beca pauses, her key in the door. Of course that’s what this is about. She should have anticipated it. She feels a fluttering somewhere between her heart and her stomach, like there’s a small bird trapped within her abdomen. “Yeah,” she finally says.

An intake of breath through the phone. _“For me?”_

Beca swallows and shakes her head, though she knows Chloe can’t see her. “No. I broke up with him for me.”

_“But… I mean, I had something to do with it, right?”_

Beca pauses for a moment. “Yeah, Chlo,” she finally says, her voice soft and barely-there. “You had something to do with it.”

The line goes silent. Neither woman speaks for a very long time.

Eventually, the tension gets too thick, and Beca finds that she needs to speak immediately or else she’s going to just about collapse from the stress of the silence.

She clears her throat loudly. “So… you going to this thing at Amy’s tonight?”

 _“I was thinking about it, yeah,”_ Chloe responds, her own voice somewhere near a whisper. Too quiet for the abject lightness of this particular topic. Then again, they both know it’s simply a front for something else, something deeper.

“So… I’ll see you tonight?”

_“Yeah. Tonight works.”_

Beca shifts her backpack a little higher on her shoulder. “Unless…” She trails off.

 _“Unless?”_ Chloe prods.

“Well… I’m free earlier than that. If you wanted to… I don’t know. Do something.”

There’s a smile in Chloe’s voice when next she speaks. _“I’m pretty hungry. Have you had lunch yet?”_

“Nah, I could eat. Meet at Mario’s in 20?”

_“Perfect. It’s a date.”_

And when Chloe hangs up the phone, Beca feels that same bird in her stomach again, flapping its wings like it’s trying to create a mini-tornado.

She smiles, her head ducked down towards her chest, and finally manages to open her front door.

____________________

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, feel free to follow me on [ tumblr. ](https://morningsound15.tumblr.com/)


	5. Road Trip

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Maybe she’s out of her damn mind, bringing her girlfriend home to her estranged mother for one of the most stressful weekends of the year, but, well… Beca’s never really pretended to be fully sane.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **_Friday, July 27: Road Trip_ **
> 
> My take on Bechloe Week 2018. The chapters move chronologically and can be read as a sequence of one-shots within the same universe.
> 
> Sorry (again) for the late post… you guys are incredibly patient it means a lot to me.

____________________

_Swiftly arose and spread around me the peace and joy and knowledge that pass all the art and argument of the earth;_

____________________

Beca doesn’t get to see her mom very often. Her parents got divorced when she was 16, and — in a strange subversion of established and expected gender-roles — her dad became her primary, full-time, legal guardian. Her mom moved away, her dad stayed put, and everyone involved “thought it was best” if she stayed and finished out her high school years at the same school, the one she’d already gotten used to, the one she’d been at for 2 years already. (They never bothered to ask her what _she_ wanted to do, though; somehow that never seemed to cross their minds.) And then that was that.

Beca doesn’t blame them. Well, she _does,_ but not for the divorce. Her parents have never been a good match romantically, and Beca’s always kind of known that. Her mom is an artist, a self-proclaimed ‘free spirit’ who likes to go grocery shopping barefoot and who likes to disappear on week-long ‘artist retreats’ with no phone and no electricity and no way to get in contact with her. Her dad, on the other hand, has always been serious. He’s the academic. He used to ask her friends growing up to call him “Professor Mitchell” instead of “Mr. Mitchell,” so _that_ probably paints a pretty accurate depiction of what _he’s_ like. He was always the one with the schedule, always the one at the PTA meetings, always the one driving her to soccer games or to the pool or whatever the hell else it was she used to do before she hit puberty and started hating pretty much everything about herself.

So, really, if she’s being honest, the fact that they managed to stay married for almost 20 years was a shock in and of itself.

Beca doesn’t blame them for getting a divorce. She understands that they were never really a good match, so she’s actually kind of _glad_ they aren’t married anymore. (She may be a little selfish, but she’s not _cruel._ Give her _some_ credit, here.)

So, she doesn’t blame them for the divorce. Things she does blame her parents for: her dad cheating on her mom; her dad getting remarried six months after his divorce was finalized; her mom moving to Vermont and basically giving up all parental rights to her only daughter.

So. Yeah. Maybe she’s a little bitter. She never pretended like she wasn’t. And… _whatever_. _She’s_ not the one who left.

Here’s the messed up thing: Beca’s mom is an artist, a painter. You’d think, given the fact that they’re practically kindred spirits, what with the whole ‘pursuing the same unstable and possibly-ill-advised career path’ thing, that they’d get along really well.

They absolutely do not.

Andrea Mitchell is flaky, unreliable, and pretty selfishly self-absorbed. Beca once got left in an art museum alone for _2 hours_ because her mom wandered off and ended up getting distracted by a tour group that was walking by. It was only hours later, when the tour finally ended, that Andrea realized she’d left her daughter alone at the MoMa. Beca was 9 at the time. Her dad totally flipped when he found out, obviously. That’s the first big fight Beca remembers them having.

The point is, Andrea isn’t exactly the kind of person you can turn to in a time of crisis. She couldn’t even be bothered to make the trip down to Georgia to watch her daughter graduate from high school. That’s the kind of person she is. That’s the kind of relationship they have.

And look, Beca understands that some people just aren’t the child-rearing type. She’s pretty sure her mom never really wanted to have kids, and only let herself get talked into it because Beca’s dad can be pretty annoyingly persistent. She _gets_ that. She understands that sometimes people make mistakes, that sometimes people get talked into doing things they never really wanted to do. And she doesn’t think it’s her mom’s _fault,_ exactly; not _really._

But it still _blows_ major dong to have your mom move to basically another corner of the country right when you’re on the cusp of adulthood, right when you’re starting to realize that maybe you might need your mom more than your thirteen-year-old self ever wanted to admit. It still blows when your mom moves to Vermont and leaves you behind, when you only get to see her at Thanksgiving and for a few weeks every summer.

It still fucking sucks.

And Beca’s dad is, somehow, just as bad. Where her mom is an almost entirely-absent figure in her life, no matter how hard she tries, she probably couldn’t even pay her dad to give her some space. He’s over-involved in his daughter’s life to an almost stifling degree. He likes to micro-manage her every action, her every decision.  He’s the one who demanded she go to college before moving to LA, he’s the one who forced her to join a club at school, he’s the one who remarried a Stepford Wife and started spitting out new babies with her, even though he’s in his late forties and is objectively _way_ too old to be having toddler-age children.

She’s getting off-topic here.

Her situation in the parental unit department is pretty pitiful, is what she’s saying. And it sometimes seems like she’s just, like… _biologically incapable_ of having a decent, healthy relationship with either one of her parents. One of them she can’t possibly trust, and the other is so hyper-invested in her personal life that she finds herself withdrawing from every emotional situation just because she’s sick and tired of his soppy, overly-emotional platitudes. Both of them are frustrating, annoying, childish, and completely unable to pick up a hint or read a fucking room.

But… fuck it, y’know? At the end of the day they’re still her fucking _parents._ She can bitch and moan all she likes, but like… she _knows_ her dad really _does_ have her best intentions at heart when he sticks his nose in her business. And, truthfully, Beca’s mom may drive her up the goddamn _wall_ , but she still loves her. She’s still her _mom_. And she doesn’t get to see her very often, and Andrea is the world’s worst communicator so they barely talk on the phone, either, and…

Well, it’s Thanksgiving. It’s the time of year Beca goes to see her mom. So… she’s going. She’s already decided. She’s talked it over with her dad, she’s made a plan, she’s put together a couple banging mixes for her drive… she’s got it all figured out.

The thing she didn’t factor into her decision: Chloe.

Chloe is… complicated. But not in the way you’d think.

They’re dating, which is… bananas, actually. Like when she really thinks about it. It’s kind of impossible to believe. She’s dating Chloe. _She’s_ dating _Chloe._ Or, even stranger: _Chloe Beale_ is dating _her._ Out of the thousands and thousands of students are Barden (any of whom, Chloe has made it clear to her, could have grabbed her attention — and very many did), Chloe picked _her._ Beca will never know why, but… here they are.

They’ve been dating for a few months now and it’s _good._ It’s actually, like… _really_ fucking good. It’s crazy. Things are just so _natural_ between the two of them, like they’ve just taken their friendship and… turned up the dial, a little bit. And added in some kissing. And some light groping (which is rapidly turning into _heavy groping_ ). It just… Beca never knew it could _feel_ like this. (A little sweaty, a little anxiety-inducing, a little heart-racing-and-skin-tingling-with-unexplainable-anticipation; like she’s just chugged five huge ass coffees and the caffeine is only now starting to absorb into her blood stream.)

The point is, Beca’s never _had_ a girlfriend before. She’s never really had a significant other of any sort, before, for any significant length of time. Never introduced someone she was dating to her parents, never had to change her relationship status on Facebook… She just never really gave much thought to the fact that, well… if you like someone, and if you’re serious and seriously-exclusively-dating them, sometimes you’re expected to… spend the holidays with them.

But _Chloe_ had given it thought. And she expected to spend Thanksgiving with Beca.

Which… it’s _fine._ That would be _fine._ Beca even thinks that, under different circumstances, she’d be pretty fucking _stoked_ that Chloe wants to come home with her for Thanksgiving.

But there’s a slight hiccup to that plan, see. Because despite the fact that they’ve been dating for a few months now, Beca hasn’t had the chance to tell her mom about Chloe, yet. Or her dad. Or her friends from home. Or… really anyone who doesn’t go to school with them.

It’s not… look, they aren’t _hiding_ anything. They aren’t dating in _secret._ (They tried, for a little while, to keep things on the down low — if only for Jesse’s sake. But it quickly became apparent that they were fucking _terrible_ about keeping it a secret, and Amy and Cynthia Rose managed to sniff them out in only about 3 weeks.) They’re fully open with their relationship to their friends at school. Chloe’s family knows that they’re together. Just the other week, Chloe posted a picture to her Instagram of Beca curled up in Chloe’s bed (she was just _napping,_ don’t get any crazy ideas) with a single yellow heart as the caption. So. Y’know. They’re _official_ and everything.

It’s just that… Well…

Okay, so Beca doesn’t have a good excuse for why her parents don’t know about Chloe. She just… hasn’t told them. She doesn’t know why. But for some reason she just _can’t_ seem to tell them. And she’s tried. Believe her, she’s tried. But it’s like every time she opens her mouth to say the words, or starts crafting some carefully-worded ‘coming out’ email or something, she just… freezes.

It’s different for Chloe. Chloe’s _always_ been out and open about her sexual preferences. She’s physical, she’s touchy, she’s loose with her affections. It comes as a surprise to exactly _no one_ that she also likes to date women. And Chloe’s family life is also supremely different from Beca’s. They’re, like… weirdly supportive in everything she does; her parents used to encourage her to run around in her backyard without shoes on, because they felt shoes were ‘unnecessarily binding and restrictive.’ So she’s operating on a different playing field than Beca is; she’s got a different background, different advantages. She’s not exactly what one would call ‘emotionally stunted.’

And Beca’s not emotionally stunted _either,_ not _really,_ she just… isn’t out. Which is _fine,_ people come out at their own pace, and it isn’t… it isn’t like she’s _ashamed_ of it, or anything. It isn’t like she’s ashamed of _Chloe._

(Her stomach feels unsettled when she thinks of that; that queasy sort of feeling she’s prone to getting whenever she lies.)

She just hasn’t gotten around to coming out, yet. So this… this is her prefect chance. It’s as good a time as any. Just… just show up on her mom’s front door and say, _“Hey, mom, I know we haven’t seen each other in months, but I wanted to introduce you to the girl I’m trying to sleep with. Her name is Chloe and she’s really nice.”_

Fuck. No, she can’t say that.

God, maybe she’s just crazy. Maybe she’s out of her damn mind, bringing her girlfriend home to her estranged mother for one of the most stressful weekends of the year, but, well… Beca’s never really pretended to be fully sane.

____________________

Her hands are sweating. Do her hands _usually_ sweat? She doesn’t think she’s ever felt them sweat, before; at least not like _this._ It’s like there are entire oceans in her palms.

Maybe she’s making a mistake. Maybe they should turn around, and just go back to Barden and not bother with this whole—

Chloe puts a hand on top of Beca’s where it grips the steering wheel like a vice, knuckles white against the dark leather. “You’re over-thinking, again,” she murmurs quietly in Beca’s ear, and Beca shudders at the feeling of Chloe’s breath ghosting over the shell of her ear, but she relaxes at once, almost subconsciously, which she thinks was probably Chloe’s goal all along.

“An unfortunate character trait of mine.”

“You’re nervous,” Chloe says. It isn’t a question, but still Beca nods.

“I haven’t seen her in a few months,” Beca says with a shrug. Chloe’s fingers are brushing the tops of Beca’s hand, and the feeling is repetitive, a little ticklish, and completely soothing. Beca feels her shoulders relax, her hands unclench. Her heart is still racing, but at least her body has slowed down. “And I haven’t exactly… y’know.” She glances at Chloe out of the corner of her eye. “Haven’t exactly told her about us yet. Or about me.”

She watches Chloe like she’s trying to spot something in her face, like she’s anxiously (and nervously) anticipating a reaction, anything besides _calm, quiet, understanding acceptance._ That’s been Chloe’s reaction every time this topic has come up in recent months.

It’s… not exactly a _contention_ between them. Not _exactly._ More like… more like a quietly-bubbling tension, something they both see and acknowledge but are pointedly choosing not to address.

Because here’s the thing: Beca and Chloe have _completely_ different approaches to their dating life. Chloe is all about PDA — she likes to kiss Beca on the cheek, to hold her hand as they walk along the quad, to go out to dinner together and snuggle up against each other at Bella group sleepovers. She likes sharing pictures on social media, likes when Beca’s hand slips into her back pocket on the way to the movie theater. She likes the fact that they’re dating, and wants to make it obvious to any and all outside observers. But Beca is different. She likes her privacy; she likes to keep things ambiguously PG when they’re out in public. She doesn’t mind holding hands, but she’d prefer not to kiss very deeply when they’re, like… standing in a random hallway in the science center. She likes curling up in Chloe’s bed after long afternoon classes, likes when Chloe runs her fingers through her hair when they’re alone. But she doesn’t… she’s _private._ She doesn’t love PDA, thinks it contributes to partner insecurities, thinks it’s mostly about performative romance and ego-boosting and overcompensation. She’ll put up with PDA for Chloe because she _likes_ Chloe and she’d do just about anything for her, but she doesn’t necessarily accurately truthfully _like_ it all that much. And they both know why she feels that way.

Beca isn’t _out._ Not… not in the purest sense of the word. Oh sure, people around Barden probably know (or at least are moderately aware of the fact that) she and Chloe are dating. But it’s not… she isn’t part of any clubs, or anything; she’s not in the Queer Students Alliance, or something. She doesn’t have rainbow flag stickers on her computer, or pins on her backpack; she doesn’t read queer feminist literature; her Twitter bio makes 0 mention of her sexuality. And look, partly that’s because she doesn’t really _have_ a label for herself or her sexuality. If you asked her what her sexual preferences are, she’d probably just shrug at you.

But a big part of it is that… she hasn’t told her parents. As far as she can tell (and she thinks she’d know, considering the fact that her father, despite obsessively tracking her every movement, has never actually asked her a legitimate question and listened to the answer all the way through, and considering the fact that her mother lives in another goddamn _state_ ) they have no idea she’s in any way… _not_ straight.

And… she doesn’t think they’d _mind._ She doesn’t think they’d disown her, or… or pull out bibles and curse her, or something crazy like that. She just… that’s not the sort of thing your parents are supposed to find out about you on the internet. It’s just not the way these things are done. So… she just has to tell them, first. Once she tells them, once they officially know… that’ll… things will change, then. Once she can be… open, and out, and…

She just has to tell them. She’s just gotta work up the courage, to like… actually do it. Stop pussyfooting and… and tell them.

(She wants to tell them. She _does._ She wants _desperately_ for them to know. She just… as terrible as it is, she just doesn’t feel _ready_. But she doesn’t think she can admit that, not out loud, not to Chloe, who likes her and who likes kissing her and who has been so kind and so _patient_ about all of this.)

She knows Chloe doesn’t feel great about the fact that Beca’s sexuality is a secret from her family. Oh, Chloe _understands_ how she feels; of course she does. She’s like… the world’s best girlfriend. It’s honestly kind of annoying, sometimes. So, Beca knows that she definitely empathizes with what Beca’s going through; she definitely sympathizes with Beca’s situation. But just because she understands that Beca is nervous and not out to her family doesn’t mean she’s, like… _happy_ about them not knowing. Beca knows it makes her feel shunted, a little; like some sort of dirty secret Beca can’t quite stomach revealing. Like she’s something to be hidden away, something to lie about, something to be ashamed of. And Chloe _knows_ that isn’t how Beca feels; Beca _knows_ she knows this.

But it’s one thing to know something, and quite another thing to believe it.

Chloe just smiles in that quiet, soft, understanding way (the way that twinges just slightly with sadness) and squeezes Beca’s fingers. “I know,” she says. She bends and presses a quick kiss to Beca’s shoulder, before withdrawing from her completely. Beca misses the warmth of Chloe’s hand on hers immediately; immediately wishes it were back within reach. “You’ll be great, Becs. And remember: I’m here with you the whole way.” She shoots Beca a smile that Beca shakily returns. “You don’t have to tell her anything you’re not ready for.”

Beca shakes her head. Her stomach is tight and her pulse is pounding and her hands feel like they’re bound to slip off the steering wheel at any moment, but she shakes her head. “No,” she says, determined, “I’m telling her. I promised you I would. You’re coming home with me for Thanksgiving and I’m… I’m gonna tell her. I promise.”

Chloe smiles again and kisses Beca’s shoulder once more. “If you’re ready,” is all she says back.

____________________

Did her mom’s house always look like this? Small, styled like a log cabin buried deep in the forest, with huge bay windows, a front yard overgrowing with home-grown gardens and plants that need weeding, trees that need trimming, a million and a half pots and window boxes crammed on the porch, hanging from things? Did she always have to strain her eyes to pick out the front door? Is her mom clinically unable of cleaning up before guests arrive, or is it just a habit of hers? (In all fairness, Beca didn’t exactly _tell her_ she was bringing a guest, but… whatever, it’s the holidays, it wouldn’t exactly kill her to pick up a broom.)

Andrea is standing on the front porch when Beca’s car pulls in. She’s got slippers on her feet and a poncho thrown over her artist’s overalls, reading glasses on, hair up in a big, messy bun, cup of warm tea in hand. She’s gazing out at the trees in front of her, almost like she can’t even see them; like she’s lost in some kind of nature-induced trance that she may never wake from. Or maybe she’s just smoked a bunch of weed today. That’s always a decently-likely explanation.

Beca takes a breath in the car, a deep inhale while Chloe opens her door and starts pulling their bags from the trunk. (She’s thankful for Chloe, thankful that Chloe seems to know how to read her, to see and understand and feel when Beca needs just a moment to herself; a moment to breathe, a moment to pause, a moment to gather herself.)

It’s only when Beca finally emerges from the car and closes her door that her mom seems to come back to herself. She blinks at the noise, shaking her head once, twice, before turning towards Beca. She grins and makes her way slowly down the stairs, her arms thrown out and open in a wide gesture, clearly expecting a hug. “Beca,” she says sweetly, wrapping her daughter up in a tight (and fairly uncomfortable) embrace, “I’m _so_ happy you could make it.”

Beca grimaces a little and pats her mom on the back in return. “I’m happy to be here,” she says, only kind of not meaning it.

“Beca,” Andrea whispers loudly with a quick glance over her daughter’s shoulder followed by a long, exaggerated wink, “I didn’t know you were bringing a _friend_ home.” There’s something to the way she says ‘friend’ that makes Beca’s heart leap up into her throat. She shoves it back down and pointedly ignores it. (She’s nervous, she’s stressed, she’s reading into things. There’s no way her mom knows.)

(Right?)

The sound of footsteps crunching on gravel, and Beca backs away a little and clears her throat, doing whatever she can not to meet her mother’s gaze. Is she… she doesn’t _know,_ right? There’s no _way_ she could have possibly guessed— “Mom,” Beca says quickly, “this is Chloe.”

Chloe grins her thousand-watt smile, the smile that’s been carefully cultivated to charm and immediately endear. She sticks her hand out in greeting. “Hi, Ms. Alexander. So nice to meet you.”

Andrea waves her away. “No handshakes. We’re huggers in this house.”

Beca mumbles a quiet, slightly-mortified, “ _Mom,_ ” but Chloe is already laughing and letting herself be pulled into a tight embrace.

They finally separate (after a hug that feels like it goes on _much_ longer than propriety dictates, in Beca’s opinion), and Andrea pats Chloe on the cheek affectionately. (She’s always been like that; always been quick to touch and quick to show affection and quick to fall in love and quick to abandon it.) “Not that this isn’t a treat, of course!” Andrea exclaims. “But I’m afraid I wasn’t expecting anyone else besides Beca, this weekend.”

Beca swallows thickly, her heart once again in her throat. “Yeah, sorry about springing this on you. Chloe is—” _my girlfriend,_ she tries to say, but the words are lodged somewhere behind her tongue, frozen, and they can’t get out. She holds on the pause, stretching it out for just a beat too long. She opens her mouth wider, trying to force the words out of her throat, but she can’t—

“A friend,” Chloe supplies easily, catching Beca’s eye and sending her a soft, understanding smile. Beca burns with a feeling akin to _shame,_ but not quite. “I’m a friend from school. My own parents were going to Tennessee to spend Thanksgiving with my brother and his new girlfriend. But I thought… well, it’s _Tennessee._ ”

Andrea chuckles. “Say no more, say no more.”

Chloe smiles in that easy way she has, open and honest and completely ingratiating. “Beca offered to take me home with her. I’m sorry if I’m putting you out.”

“No, of course not! The more the merrier.” Andrea looks between the two of them. Beca thinks she would clap her hands together, if they weren’t still full of a mug of tea. “Well, come along then. You’ve had a long drive. Let’s get you settled in.” She turns and starts picking her way through the front lawn, her slippers raising high above the grass and settling back down carefully. The leaves crunch under her footsteps as she moves away from them. Beca lets out a breath she hadn’t known she’d been holding. There’s something tickling at the back of her throat, something uncomfortable, that feels like a cough, or maybe tears. She doesn’t want to look at Chloe, not right now, not _yet,_ not when she’s just done… not when she’s just—

Beca glances her way to see that Chloe’s already looking at her. She shoots Beca a small, subtle wink. “That went well,” she stage-whispers from the driveway as Beca bends down to pick up their suitcases.

Beca smiles back at her, but her own relief is minimal and short-lived, overpowered by deeper, much stronger feelings of _guilt_ and _shame_ and _am I in over my head_ and _why can’t I do this_ and _why can’t I be enough_ and _why didn’t I prepare more for this._

A thought pops into her head all at once, and Beca groans and very nearly drops her bag as she reaches up to smack her own forehead. “Oh, shit,” she mutters, “I forgot to tell you: my mom is… off-and-on a vegan? So… no guarantees you’ll actually get any _real_ Thanksgiving food this weekend. Sorry in advance.” Banter is good; banter is easy. She can slip back into banter without thinking. Better that than having to face the reality of her situation, which is that she’s brought her girlfriend home for Thanksgiving and has thus far proven to be completely incapable of actually _saying_ that she’s her girlfriend.

But, yeah… jokes about Vegan Thanksgiving. She can do that as easy as breathing.

Chloe just smiles and bumps Beca’s shoulder with her own as they fall in-step, climbing the stairs to Beca’s mom’s house. Beca can practically smell the incense and jicama from here (subtle, even as it is, under the omnipresent smell of _fall_ and _leaves_ and _New England winter fast-approaching_ ). “You know I was a vegetarian for like five years, right?” Chloe teases. “I’ve had every kind of tofu-substitute-meat imaginable. I can’t be intimidated any more.”

Beca laughs weakly. “Well, you haven’t tried my mom’s cooking, yet.” Chloe just grins at her.

“I’m afraid the second guest room isn’t useable at the moment,” Andrea calls from somewhere inside, somewhere that sounds far away, “so you girls may have to bunk together!”

Beca clears her throat and flushes as Chloe laughs under her breath and ducks her head, looking at the floor. “Yeah, that’s okay!” she calls back, hoping desperately that her mother can’t hear the embarrassment in her voice. “We’ve… that’s no problem!”

____________________

If Beca had put much thought into this excursion (which, she’s coming to realize more and more, she decidedly did _not_ think about for long enough), she probably would have thought that Thanksgiving dinner with her mom and her best-friend-turned-girlfriend would be awkward. Andrea’s train of thought is hard enough to understand when it’s just the two of them; factor in Chloe, someone Beca actually really cares about and kind of wants to at least _try_ to impress, and she would have been pretty confident they were sailing towards disaster.

But in execution, it’s actually pretty okay. More than okay, even: it’s actually pretty _normal._

Shock of all shocks.

Chloe and Andrea have been trading pleasantries easily, moving around each other like they’ve known each other for years. Chloe asks her mother probing, interesting questions about her art with absolutely no sarcasm or faux-interest — she seems to be _actually_ interested in the answers. And Andrea can tell, and that makes her excited and open and…

It’s weird. Is it weird? Or is it just good? Should she stop overthinking about the fact that her girlfriend and her mother _actually_ get along and just _enjoy_ it?

“Chloe,” her mom says abruptly, half-way through their main course. They’re eating on the back porch, a large wooden deck that’s screened in to stop summer mosquitos from invading. But there are no mosquitos, not at this time of year, and it’s _just_ a little too cold out to be entirely comfortable. But Andrea cannot be deterred when it comes to communing with nature — she hands them all thick woolen blankets, lights a dozen candles, and hides space heaters under the table to keep their feet warm. She likes to eat outside, she says, at any time of year; makes her feel more connected to the earth around her. “Tell me a little about yourself.”

It’s… that’s a question a _regular_ mom would ask. That’s something… trying to get to know Beca’s friends with common pleasantries, that’s her _dad’s_ thing, not her _mom’s._ Beca was expecting something _weirder,_ like… _‘What are your top 5 National Parks?’_ , or _‘What’s your favorite mid-century postmodernist interior design trend?’_. Something _weird_ like that.

(Is this _weird?_ It _feels_ weird. Why is her mom being so _normal,_ right now? What is she playing at?)

Chloe, obviously, doesn’t pick up on how _strange_ this all is. She just brightens, and sits up a little straighter in her chair. “Well, I’m from Charlotte, North Carolina. I have two older brothers. I love animals, hate Russian literature. Oh, and I’m in Beca’s acapella group.”

“That’s how the two of you met, is it?” There’s nothing expectant in Andrea’s question, in her voice; there’s nothing about her that seems outwardly _knowing._ She seems perfectly innocent. Beca frowns at her suspiciously. Innocence, coming form her mother, is never a good sign. “You’re in the same year in your singing club?” Beca tries not to wince at that, and has to bite her tongue not to correct her mother and say, _No, actually, it isn’t a **club.**_ God, if Aubrey were here, she’d probably be having a stroke right now.

Chloe just breezes right on over the mistake. “I’m actually in my fifth year at Barden. Well, I have to retake a semester, because I failed a class I needed for my major. One of my majors. But I’m in good shape to pass, right now; my grades are a lot better, so…” She smiles and shrugs, tucks a piece of hair behind her ear. Beca is mesmerized by the action. “I’m applying to this program that lets you complete your master’s degree in one year, rather than two. I’m trying to get mine in biomedical engineering.” And this isn’t anything she hasn’t heard before (Chloe loves to pace around her bedroom as she plans her life out, step-by-step, complete with furrowed brows and pursed lips and long sighs, making extensive lists out loud that Beca diligently copies down for her, so she doesn’t forget), but Beca is still enthralled by what she’s saying. She thinks Chloe could probably read the phone book out loud to her, and Beca would still be enraptured by every word.

And though she is a self-proclaimed hippie at heart, a woman who shirks capitalism and standard measures of interpersonal progress wherever possible, Beca’s mom still manages to look more than a little impressed. “That’s not an easy thing to do. You certainly are driven.”

Chloe smiles and ducks her head, as if to hide the pleasant flush those words evoke. “That’s sort of a new development, actually. I was…” she twiddles with her thumbs, a nervous habit of hers— “I had kind of a rough year, last year. I was feeling pretty unmotivated. But then,” she glances at Beca, “I don’t know. Something just… lit a fire under me. I can’t really explain it.”

Andrea looks like she understands. Which… she _can’t,_ not really, not _fully,_ but there’s still… there’s something comforting about her smile. And Beca’s not generally one to let herself be comforted by her flighty mother, but… well. It still feels kind of nice. To see her understand. “Well,” Andrea says as she turns back to her plate of greens, “as long as you’re happy. That’s the most important thing. All the money and degrees in the world won’t mean a thing to you, if you aren’t also happy.”

“Yeah,” Chloe says softly, her hand slipping into Beca’s under the table. She gives it a soft squeeze. “I know. And I am happy.”

“Good. That’s what’s important.”

____________________

“Dinner was delicious, Andrea. Thank you so much.” Beca thinks Chloe might be laying it on a _little_ thick (dinner was _fine,_ as long as you don’t mind tofurkey and brussles sprouts and fake gravy — three things Beca decidedly does _not_ love) but Chloe’s always been less of a picky eater than her. Then again, she can’t say she necessarily _blames_ her for the excessive flattery. _She’d_ probably be sucking up, too, if she were meeting Chloe’s parents for the first time.

“It was my pleasure.”

Chloe smiles and starts piling up plates, silverware, and napkins to take into the kitchen. Andrea and Beca both immediately stand to help her, but Chloe waves them off. “No no no,” she says with a shake of her head, “you wouldn’t let me help with dinner, so I’m not letting you help with dishes. You two, sit.” She points deliberately at Beca. “You too, Becs. Butt in seat. Talk to your mom for a few minutes while I scrub plates.”

Beca fights the way her eyes want to twitch, panicked, over to her mother. “Are you _sure_?” she asks seriously, hoping against hope that her eyes can effectively communicate her message of _Don’t you dare leave me here all alone, you ass; I can’t survive a conversation **alone** with my **mother** without a buffer. You don’t know what she’s like; we might end up in a screaming match, or we might end up crying together. It’s really 50-50, and I’m not really trying for either tonight._

Unfortunately, Chloe does not appear to pick up on Beca’s silent cry for help. She brushes a hand down Beca’s arm, casual and light. Beca’s stomach nevertheless clenches at the contact. “I’ve got this, Beca,” Chloe reassures her gently, even as she stacks plates into her hands. “Talk to your mom.”

That might be a hint. Beca thinks it might be a hint. Or, maybe, a giant ‘Kick Me!’ sign on the back of her shirt; a not-so-subtle shove on the back, courtesy of her girlfriend; a big neon sign hanging over Chloe’s head that screams ‘Tell Her!’ _Try to actually share some of your life with her,_ Chloe had suggested in the car. _She probably wants to get to know you as much as you want to get to know her._

Easier said than done, Beca thinks. She and Andrea aren’t exactly the _touchy-feely_ kind. And Beca’s not really one to share how she’s feeling with other people. As she watches Chloe disappear into the kitchen, Beca is struck with a sinking sensation in the pit of her stomach; something that feels like _dread,_ something that feels like _a long time coming,_ something that seems to say _you’ve avoided talking to her for long enough, time to nut up or shut up._

Beca swallows, and scrambles for something to say, something to break the silence, something to ease her mom into this conversation without just blurting out, “ _So, hey, you know Chloe, right? Yeah, we’re dating. That’s right, I’m gay. Well… maybe-gay. The jury’s still out on that. Anyway, I’m the same person I’ve always been, I’m still your daughter, just… with a girlfriend, now. Thanks for dinner, this has been super fun, and not at all humiliating, so I’m just gonna go bury my head in the garden outside now; call me back in when it’s time for Christmas._ ”

But Beca is, thankfully, saved from having to pick a topic of conversation. “That Chloe sure is a sweetheart,” Andrea says, unprompted, and Beca sags in relief. This is good; she can do this. Talking about how awesome Chloe is? She could do this shit in her _sleep._ Thank God her mom has managed to latch on to the _one_ topic Beca feels she is actually, consistently an expert on: Chloe’s best qualities.

She opens her mouth, ready to expound a thousand of Chloe’s virtues, only to choke on her tongue just a moment before the words tumble out. She coughs a few times, her eyes watering as she slowly realizes just _how close_ she was to saying something totally obvious and _super gay,_ like, _“Isn’t Chloe the best ever? She’s so pretty and smart and I like her so much.”_ (She’d never actually _say that,_ of course, because she’s got, like… standards and a sense of self-worth. But… in terms of paraphrasing, that’s a pretty accurate representation of what she’s thinking.)

She finally only manages to say, lamely, “Yeah. She’s pretty great.”

Andrea either doesn’t notice her daughter’s inner turmoil, or else chooses to ignore it (probably the former, given how historically she’s been known to be rather _un_ observant). She smiles brightly. “I like her a lot,” she says. “And I’m glad you brought her here.”

Beca is, believe it or not, a little relieved. Not that she’d _needed_ her mother’s blessing — nor had she particularly cared to seek it out — but it’s still… well, it’s nice. Knowing that Chloe is liked by the people who matter to her is nice. Because Chloe matters to her, too. Probably a lot more than she’s willing to admit, at the moment.

“That’s… I’m glad. Because… she’s sort of like my best friend.” (Understatement of the century.) “And I’ve never really… I’ve never really _had_ one of those before. So I’m… it’s good that you like her.”

Andrea is looking at her with this soft, quiet sort of expression. Her eyes are kind, and knowing, and it’s making Beca want to squirm in her seat. “She’s beautiful, too,”

Beca bites down on her tongue and tries not to let her panic show on her face. “She—” she starts to stutter, feeling a flush building up her neck (of embarrassment, shame, or pleasure, she can’t quite tell).

“Beca,” her mom says softly (too softly), “if there’s… something you want to tell me… something you want to talk about…” She lets her words hang, long and open in the empty silence between them.

Beca can’t speak. She can’t. There’s so much she wants to say, _too much,_ really, that she just… she can’t say any of it. How does she explain? How can she even begin to start to tell her mother everything that’s on her mind, everything that’s been going on with her for these past few months? They’ve never spoken at any serious length about the things that plague Beca on the day-to-day; her mom has never been reliable enough for that. And there’s no promising that even now — even though Beca is now an adult woman with her own standing and her own life and her own capital, even now that she’s someone who is no longer dependent on the whims of a flighty woman to dictate her future — that her mother will prove to be anything more than the person Beca has known her entire life. There’s no guarantee she won’t just shrug and say “c’est la vie,” or maybe, “have you tried asking your father yet?”

 _I think I’m falling in love with this girl,_ she thinks, _and she’s the most beautiful girl I’ve ever met. I think that I’ve always loved girls, but I don’t know what I’m supposed to do about it. How do I explain to Chloe that she means so much to me, that she means the world to me, while still effectively communicating that I’m just not **ready** for what it means to be… **out** like that to everyone in our lives? How do I tell her that I want to be proudly with her but I’m just so **scared?** And what if I tell her and she doesn’t understand? What if she decides I’m not worth the trouble and breaks up with me, right when I’m starting to feel like I might actually be able to become a person who cares about other people some day, so long as I don’t get my heart broken before then? What if this is all premature, and she changes her mind in a few months, and I’m left behind in the dust? What if I somehow (probably, likely) fuck everything up? How do I prepare myself to maybe lose the most important person in my life, right when I’m just finding her? How can I let myself get into this situation, knowing that it’ll probably only end in heartbreak, sometime in the future?_

“Well,” Andrea continues, with something like understanding in the curve of her smile. She pats Beca’s hand once, very quickly. “Whenever you’re ready, then.”

Beca swallows thickly and thinks, _God, when will that be?_

____________________

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’m lowering the rating on this, now that I actually know what the last chapter is going to be about.
> 
> Follow me on [ tumblr. ](https://morningsound15.tumblr.com/)


	6. Good Luck Charm

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Beca’s never been a superstitious person.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **_Saturday, July 28: Good Luck Charm_ **
> 
> My take on Bechloe Week 2018. The chapters move chronologically and can be read as a sequence of one-shots within the same universe.
> 
> Sorry (again) for the super late post… 2 months later and I finally got there lol.

____________________

 _And limitless are leaves stiff or drooping in the fields,_  
And brown ants in the little wells beneath them,  
and mossy scabs of the wormfence, and heaped stones, and elder and mullein and poke-weed. 

____________________

Beca’s never been a superstitious person. That whole, ‘black cat brings bad luck’, ‘don’t walk under a ladder’, ‘step on a crack, break your mother’s back’ sort of thing. She’s always thought it was bunk. She’s never really believed in things like fate, or luck, or destiny. Never been put in a position where any of that stuff seems real, or makes sense, really. Believing in luck only discounts the actual, tangible hard work that real life people put into their tasks, their accomplishments, their goals. Believing in destiny only ever allows you to deny responsibility for your actions. That’s what she’s always believed, anyway.

Her parents didn’t get divorced because of _destiny_ — they got divorced because her mom flaked out on them a few too many times, because her dad didn’t want to put the work in any more to keep their relationship afloat, because they made each other so miserable that their marriage had to dissolve or it was going to take the two of them down with it. But that’s not the same thing as _destiny._ And it wasn’t _luck_ that had them win the ICCAs last year — it was hard work, and dedication, and Beca’s kick-ass set list, and months and months of team bonding and learning to love and trust each other. (Chloe makes the argument that if it weren’t for Benji _happening_ to notice the Footnotes’ star performer was still in high school, they never would have even _gotten_ the chance to perform. Beca points out that if Aubrey had just _listened_ to her a few weeks earlier they wouldn’t have _needed_ Benji’s help. Chloe points out that it must be fate, then, since they were always supposed to end up in the finals. Beca ignores her.)

So. Beca’s never been a superstitious person. She doesn’t believe in astrology, in tarot, in palm readings, in nursery rhymes or old wives’ tales. She never has. And she thinks the people who _do_ believe in those things tend to be just a few crayons short of a full box, if you catch her drift.

But then she starts dating Chloe. Chloe, who believes in old wives’ tales, who throws salt over her shoulder if anyone spills it at the dinner table, who refuses to walk underneath ladders, open umbrellas inside any structure (even a _car,_ for Christ’s sake). Chloe, who reads her daily horoscope like it’s the morning weather, who will say things like “Looks like I should be on the lookout for career opportunities this week” the way other people comment on the fact that it’s likely to rain in the afternoon.

Chloe believes in things like luck, and destiny. She firmly believes that the universe has a plan for everyone in it; all she has to do is just sit around and wait for it to guide her. She believes in things like psychics, in crystal energy, in wiccan healing rituals.

And she’s crazy superstitious.

Which, y’know, is _fine_. Not like it _matters_ to Beca what Chloe believes in.

Except, well—

“It’s for you!” Chloe says, like that isn’t obvious.

Beca looks down at the small rope bracelet Chloe has just unceremoniously shoved into her hands, with its golden coin affixed in the middle. “Um,” she says, somewhat lamely, “thanks?”

Chloe rolls her eyes. “It’s a Chinese coin amulet, Becs. They bring prosperity and luck to the wearer!”

“Oh, cool. But, um…” she tries not to pull a face, worried that that will make her seem ungrateful or annoyed, or something (and she isn’t ungrateful, she _isn’t,_ not at all; if Chloe wants to buy her presents, then that’s just fine by her)— “Will it still work if I’m not Chinese?”

Chloe shoots her a look. “Don’t be racist, Beca.”

“That’s not racist! It’s a genuine question! It’s like, can I pray to the Jewish God if I’m not Jewish?”

Chloe looks supremely unamused. “You should really take a class in the Religion Department. I think it’d teach you a lot.”

“I just—” She takes a breath and forces her argument back down. “Thank you for the bracelet. I’m glad you think I need prosperity and luck in my life.”

“We could all do with a little prosperity and luck. Besides, I have one, too.” Chloe raises her wrist to show off the matching bracelet tied there, and Beca feels a flutter in her stomach. It’s quite unexpected.

“Oh.”

Chloe beams. “So now we can have matching luck and prosperity!”

“So, if I find five dollars on the ground, you’ll find five dollars, too?”

“Yeah, I think that’s what it means.”

“Oh, good. I wouldn’t want us to have an unequal distribution of wealth in our relationship.”

“Of course not. It creates an imbalanced power dynamic between partners. Very unhealthy. Wouldn’t want that at all.” Chloe winks, and Beca grins back at her, her chest light and her spirits high. “Here,” Chloe gestures for Beca to hold out her hand, “I’ll put it on for you.”

Chloe ties the bracelet to her wrist, and then she kisses her, and in aftermath of the kissing Beca quite forgets about the bracelet altogether.

____________________

“You’ll never guess what happened to me today,” Chloe says, bursting into Beca’s bedroom without so much as knocking.

Beca starts from her spot on her bed, ripping her headphones away from her ears at once. “Dude!” she exclaims. “Don’t do shit like that. I thought you were a burglar.”

“Yeah, I’m sure you get a lot of those in your college dorm room.”

“I have valuable stuff in here, for your information,” Beca says with a huff, turning her nose up in a display of mock-distaste. “What are you doing here, anyway? Don’t you have class in fifteen?”

“Yes, but! I had something really important to tell you.” Chloe fishes around in her pocket for a moment before she pulls out a bill, crumpled and green.

Beca squints at it for a second. “You came here to give me five dollars?”

“ _No_ , Beca. I found it! Outside, on the ground, as I was walking by your building.” She beams. “I think it’s a sign.”

Beca snorts. “A sign that some ding-dong lost five dollars.”

But Chloe just shakes her head. She waves her arm, the bracelet on her wrist catching the light of the midday sun shining in through Beca’s window. “I told you!” she says. “They bring luck and prosperity. And look at this! I’ve only been wearing it two days, and I’ve already found five dollars. _And_ I got an A minus on my term paper for Russian Lit.”

“Hey! Chloe, that’s so awesome. Congrats.”

“Thank you! And thank you, bracelet,” she says, directing her words at her wrist. “Couldn’t have done it without you.”

“You got an A minus on your paper because you’re smart and you spent a lot of time on it and you actually _read the books_ this semester. Not because of some bracelet.”

“You say potato, I say potahto.”

“No one says ‘potahto’.”

“Not true, I say it. That’s what I just said.”

Beca rolls her eyes, but the gesture is more fondness than true exasperation. “Don’t you have a class to get to, Beale?”

Chloe leans over the bed to press a quick kiss to Beca’s lips. As she backs out of the room, smile on her face, she makes sure to call, “Be on the lookout for money on the ground! I’m feeling a hot streak coming on.”

Beca laughs and shakes her head and does _not_ spend her walk to rehearsal with her eyes scanning the ground, looking for errant bills and coins, _thank you very much._

____________________

It takes a while for Beca to start to realize that, maybe, she’s having a bit of a bad luck streak. She doesn’t notice it, not for a few weeks, but as soon as she _does,_ every minor inconvenience, every unlucky moment of the past month starts looking different.

The first thing that happens is she loses her college ID and has to get it replaced. It’s not really bad luck, all things considered. Ordinarily she wouldn’t really give it a second thought. It’s only $10 to replace it, and not super out of her way or anything, just… well, she loses it when it’s raining. When she’s coming back from a Bella’s rehearsal that ran late, so it’s now past 11 and _raining_ and she’s trapped outside of her dorm with a dead phone and no way to swipe in…

Someone comes by eventually (after she’s already soaked to the bone) and lets her in, but it’s… an inconvenience, to say the least.

And _then,_ because she’s shivering and dripping wet and cold, she obviously _has_ to shower (even though it’s night time and she _hates_ showering at night). And her shower flip flops break _right_ as she’s stepping under the spray. She has to awkwardly stand on one foot for the whole time, hopping around like some weird, gigantic flamingo. The hot water runs out halfway through, too, so she has to scramble to get her shampoo out of her hair before she freezes to death under the icy cascade. _And_ to top it all off, she gets soap in her eye. She glares at that shower every time she has to go brush her teeth, now.

 _Then_ she accidentally tosses a red sock in with all of her whites, and it dyes her entire load of laundry pink. Chloe laughs at her even as she steals Beca’s formerly-white-now-pink sweatshirt. “I like pink,” she says sweetly, and Beca can only sigh and shake her head and let Chloe pilfer from the pile of clothes she now has little interest in wearing.

It’s not until the power goes out one night for a split second and completely fucks up her alarm clock that she starts thinking, well… maybe all of this isn’t just a coincidence. Because the alarm clock thing wouldn’t be an issue, normally, except today’s the day she has an in-class quiz in her 9 a.m. class. So of course, because bad luck seems to be her middle name recently, she misses it. And she had _actually_ spent a long time studying for it, which is doubly infuriating. (Her professor lets her retake the test that afternoon, and she does pretty well on it in the end, but _still_.)

Chloe checks her astrology app, but since Mercury _isn’t_ in retrograde (which, what does that even _mean_?) she says it’s probably not _actually_ a string of bad luck, more like confirmation bias at work.

Beca is skeptical.

Yeah, she doesn’t believe in bad luck or fate or destiny or anything; not _usually._ But, well… there’s only so many individual coincidences she can encounter before she starts thinking that maybe they’re not really coincidences at all.

____________________

Beca’s car battery dies the day before Spring Break starts and she has no way to get home, and she decides she _must_ be cursed.

“I can drive you home for break,” Chloe offers with a shrug, cutting Beca off mid-rant.

Beca looks at her, more than a little surprised. “No, Chlo…” she says quickly, “it’s fine. I’ll just hitch a ride with my dad, or something.”

“It’s only a couple hours to get to your place. I really don’t mind.”

Beca frowns. “But it’ll like double _your_ trip home.”

“It would only be five hours, Becs. Really. I don’t mind. Besides, I think it could be fun! A road trip to your place; maybe I’ll stay the weekend and then drive back to Charlotte for the rest of break.”

Beca chews on her lower lip, worrying it. “It… I can call a mechanic. Or have my dad—”

Chloe tilts her head, a curious expression pulling at her mouth. “Do you not want me to come home with you?” Beca’s heart thumps, once, up into her neck. “Because it’s fine if you don’t. I just… thought it might be fun.”

It takes Beca a moment to speak. “N-no. I _want_ you to come with me, of _course_ I do. I just… I don’t want you to… I don’t want to be an inconvenience.”

“You aren’t an inconvenience.” Chloe shakes her head, almost ruefully, the hint of a smile on her lips. “Don’t you get by now that I actually _want_ to spend time with you?”

And, well… it makes Beca feel a little dumb to realize that, no, she kind of _hadn’t_ understood that. Like… she _knows_ Chloe wants to spend time with her, but it… the act of internalizing it, not just knowing it but _feeling_ it and _comprehending_ it…

It’s strange not to consider herself as an afterthought.

She’s going to have to work on that.

____________________

Katie and Nathanial decide to throw a little party (if you can call the three of them getting trashed in Nathanial’s basement while his parents are out of town a ‘party’, that is) because it’s the first time in nearly 6 months that they’re all going to be home together at the same time.

Beca wants to go, she _really_ does, but Chloe’s still staying with her and, well…

“We don’t _have_ to go,” Beca repeats for probably the fortieth time. She’s standing near her bedroom door, leaning against a wall while she watches Chloe apply some light makeup using the mirror on her desk.

Chloe doesn’t even bother to look at her. “You want to go. And _I_ want to go, too. I haven’t met your friends before.”

“Yeah, but… it’s just gonna be the three of us drinking and maybe smoking and watching some TV. Burnout shit, you know? Like… I mean, it’s gonna be pretty boring. I can always hang with them after you leave.”

“Beca,” Chloe says firmly, putting her mascara down, “I _want_ to go. Please stop trying to talk me out of it.”

Beca flushes. “I only meant… I just want you to know what you’re getting into. So your expectations aren’t too high.”

Chloe rolls her eyes, but she’s at least smiling, now, so Beca knows she isn’t _really_ annoyed. “I think my expectations are to spend time with you and meet your friends. Pretty easy expectations to live up to.”

Beca swallows and nods. “Right. Yeah, of course.” Chloe stands and pulls her purse over her shoulder, taking a few more moments to run her hands through her hair until it has that perfect blend of wind-tousled-and-effortlessly-casual that makes Beca’s breath catch in her throat.

Beca coughs, her throat feeling unnaturally dry all of a sudden. Chloe glances over her shoulder, her eyes sparkling with mirth. She knows what she’s doing, knows that what all of this does to Beca, and, frankly, as far as Beca is concerned, she’s getting _way_ too much pleasure out of it.

“Nathanial’s pretty weird,” Beca blurts all at once, just for something to say. “And he might try to hit on you. So if that’s going to be a problem—”

Chloe is in front of her in three steps. She brings her hands up to cup Beca’s cheeks and Beca immediately falls silent. “Beca,” Chloe says quietly, her thumbs brushing along the tops of Beca’s cheekbones. The feeling makes her shiver. “Stop worrying. It’s going to be great. I’m sure we’re all going to get along.”

“Right. Right, of course.”

Chloe bends her head to kiss her, soft and sweet, and Beca relaxes into the sensation with her entire body.

 

 

“This is Chloe,” she says simply, offering no more explanation as to their relationship. She’s pretty sure her friends already know about Chloe. She talks about her, about the Bellas, about her life at school often enough that they probably at least have some idea as to who she is, and her significance in Beca’s life. (Not _everything,_ obviously. They can’t know _everything._ But she’s seen it in the glances they exchange, before — she’s seen the way they look at each other when Chloe’s name comes up in conversation, this long look with a slight raising of the eyebrows that they think Beca doesn’t notice. Well, she _does_ notice, and it always drives her crazy, always leaves her feeling sick and dizzy and a little ashamed and a little like she needs to _hide,_ like she needs to look down at her feet and her shoes and not up at them, because if she looks up at them then they might _see_ and if they _see_ they might _know_ and—)

Katie immediately beams and pulls Chloe into a tight hug. “So nice to finally meet you!” she says sincerely. “I’m Katie, obviously.” She gestures towards the table. “That’s Nathanial.” He raises his head enough to wave at them both. “Do you want anything to drink?”

“Yeah,” Chloe says easily, falling naturally in-step beside her as they walk further into the house. “I’ll come with you. Want anything, Becs?”

“Whatever you’re having is fine.” Chloe smiles at her brightly even as she moves away.

Beca, a little uncertain as to what to do, ends up falling heavily into the seat besides Nathanial. She punches him on the shoulder. He turns to her with a wide grin, his eyes slightly-unfocused. “Thanks for the hug, asshole.”

He raises his hands in explanation. “I’m _busy_ right now, Mitchell. When I’m done with this roll, then I’ll give you a hug.” His fingers are sure and dexterous as they twist the paper around his homemade filter. Some of the weed he’s attempting to pack falls out the open end (he always did over-fill his joints), but once his tongue darts out and licks the adhesive, sealing it shut, his roll is still perfect.

He twists the paper tightly closed, then sighs and sets the joint down on the table, stretching out his shoulders and rolling his neck before he turns back to her. “Hug now?”

Beca laughs and lets him throw his large arms around her shoulders, squeezing her tightly. It’s not the most comfortable embrace they’ve ever had — they’re sitting next to each other, trying to maneuver their arms around armrests and tall, uncomfortable chairs — but he smells familiar, like Old Spice and laundry detergent and a little bit like weed, and sinking into his arms still immediately relaxes her.

He pulls back, his eyes scanning her up and down, as if looking for something out of place. “You look good, Becs,” he says with a nod. “Nice hair, nice look, nice bling,” Nathanial comments, his eyes catching the way her fingers twist and tug on the rope around her wrist (a nervous habit she’s picked up in recent weeks). “Changing up the jewelry vibe, I see.” At her puzzled grimace, he’s quick to reassure, “It’s good! I wasn’t… I like it, is what I mean. Where’d you get it?”

“Oh, Chloe got us each one. She has this whole thing about luck and superstition, I guess, and…” she swallows and looks down at her hands, “they’re supposed to be lucky. It hasn’t turned out very luck for me, though, in the long run.” She glances in Chloe’s direction, just to check in. But she needn’t have worried. Chloe is firmly engaged in an animated conversation with Katie on the far side of the kitchen, each of them clutching a few beers but seemingly in no rush to rejoin the others.

“Probably because you don’t believe in it.”

“Hmm?” Beca hums, still with most of her attention on Chloe.

Nathanial laughs. “Y’gotta _believe_ in the stuff for it to work, Becs. It’s a whole karmic retribution kinda thing.”

“I don’t think that’s what that means.”

“Eh, close enough.” He picks up a lighter and flicks it on, burning away the excess paper at the end of his joint. He takes a long drag, letting the smoke ghost out of his mouth before inhaling it back through his nose (a clever party trick that Beca, despite her best efforts, never quite managed to master). He holds the still-lit joint out to her and Beca takes it gratefully. It’s been too long since she’s had the chance to smoke. She doesn’t do it often, because she takes her singing pretty seriously at this point (at least moderately-seriously) and she doesn’t ever want to do anything to jeopardize that or the Bellas’ chances at future competitions. But God, does she miss the way the smoke makes her throat burn, her chest constrict. She splutters and coughs, eyes watering, and Nathanial laughs and claps her on the back and calls her a ‘pussy’, and she just rolls her eyes, sinking into the comfort and familiarity of this lifelong friendship.

When she’s finally done sputtering, when she finally manages to pass the joint back in his direction, Nathanial quirks an eyebrow at her. “So… matching friendship bracelets?” he asks, with an air of such perfect innocence that Beca _knows_ he must be putting it on. Because there’s something in his eyes, something in the look he levels her, that makes her think… that makes it seem like maybe…

Beca takes a breath. “More like girl-friendship bracelets, I guess.”

And he just smiles and says, “Nice.” He calls out to Chloe next, shakes her hand when she walks over, tells her he’s happy to meet her, offers her the joint (which she politely declines), and the conversation continues on as if it’d never even been interrupted. But Beca’s hands are trembling, and she feels a swell of emotion building in her chest, almost like she’s about to cry, but it isn’t because she’s sad; it’s because she’s _relieved._ She’s never said those words out loud, before. Not to someone from home. Not to anyone who’s known her longer than 18 months.

And yeah, it doesn’t mean a whole lot, in the grand scheme of things. It isn’t like it’s some crazy public announcement, or anything. It isn’t like she’s just _proposed_ (she isn’t a _maniac_ ). But Chloe looks at her with the widest smile on her face, a grin of gleaming teeth, and Beca’s stomach flutters and her heart leaps and she feels like she’s walking on air.

And, yeah, it may not be _much._ It may not be exactly what she wants it to be. It may not be everything that Chloe deserves.

But it sure as hell is _something._

She takes the beer Katie hands her and tries to hide her smile in her drink, and feels, for maybe the first time in a very long time, that things really are probably going to turn out okay.

____________________

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That’s the last chapter of this fic! Thanks for being so patient with me, everyone, and letting me post this like months too late to qualify for Bechloe Week y’all are the best.
> 
> As always, feel free to follow me on [ tumblr. ](https://morningsound15.tumblr.com/)


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